Designing and assessing a multi-user tabletop interface to support collaborative decision-making involving dynamic geospatial data

Collaborative decision-making in maritime domain operations, such as port security and naval search and rescue, often requires access and sharing of rapidly changing geospatial information. This paper presents a novel digital tabletop application, called ASPECTS (Asset Planning Employing Collaborative Tabletop Systems), that enables a group of maritime domain personnel to interact with dynamic map data and related information in a rich face-to-face communications environment. The hardware platform, software architecture, and user interface of the ASPECTS system design are described, along with an initial usability study of the application. The results of the study revealed that the window management and interaction techniques provided by the ASPECTS system foster information sharing and workspace awareness during decision-making sessions. The study also revealed several limitations with the current application that are discussed, along with design issues warranting further study.