Multi-display map touring with tangible widget

Many map systems are created to help the user finding a place or define a route to follow. Google Map extends the concept of "surfing the map" by adding a street view that allows the user to explore a place from real pictures, creating the same feeling of walking through the streets. The horizontal 2D map and vertical panoramic street view, however, cause usability problems, while operating with traditional computer mouse and keyboards and presenting by single vertical or horizontal display. This paper presents a new table system composed of a horizontal tabletop screen and a vertical screen. The map view and the street view are displayed on the horizontal and vertical displays of our system respectively. Users can place the tangible pawn on the 2D map to have direct access of the street view from the pawn's point of view. In the user study, we compare our system with a standard computer system in the navigation task. The results reported that our system improves the intuitiveness of use, efficiency of city exploring and ease of remembrance on spaces that are not familiar beforehand. We also discuss limitations of using tangible objects for map navigation.