7. CubIT: Design and Evaluation of a Collaboration-Tool for Large Interactive Wall Surfaces

In this book chapter we describe the design and evaluation of CubIT, a multi-user presentation and collaboration system installed at the Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) Cube facility. The ‘Cube’ is an interactive visualisation facility made up of five very large-scale interactive multi-panel wall displays, each consisting of up to twelve 55-inch multi-touch screens (48 screens in total) and additional very large projected display screens situated above the display panels. The chapter outlines the unique design challenges, features, implementation and evaluation of CubIT. The system was built to make the Cube facility accessible to QUT’s academic and student population. CubIT enables users to easily upload and share their own media content, and allows multiple users to simultaneously interact with the Cube’s wall displays. The features of CubIT are made available via three user interfaces, a multi-touch interface working on the wall displays, a mobile phone and tablet application and a web-based content management system. Each of these interfaces play different roles and offers different interaction mechanisms, appropriate to the underlying platform. Through its interfaces CubIT supports a wide range of collaborative features including multi-user shared workspaces, drag and drop upload and sharing between users, session management and dynamic state control between different parts of the system. The results of our longitudinal evaluation study showed that CubIT was successfully used for a variety of tasks, but also highlighted specific challenges with regards to user expectations as well as issues arising from public use.