Usability testing of the interaction of novices with a multi-touch-table in semi public space Markus Jokisch, Thomas Bartoschek and Angela Schwering Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Münster, Weselerstraße 253, 48151 Münster, Germany {markus.jokisch, bartoschek, schwering}@uni-muenster.de Abstract. Touch-sensitive devices become more and more common all-around. Many people use touch interaction, especially on small devices like iPhone or other mobile phones and handhelds. But do they really understand the different gestures, know which gesture is the correct one for the intended action and do they know how to transfer the gestures to bigger devices and surfaces? This paper reports about usability tests which are carried out in semi public space to explore peoples’ ability to find gestures to navigate on a virtual globe. The globe is presented on a multi-touch-table. Furthermore, it is studied which additional gestures people use intuitively to those ones which are implemented. 1 Introduction Multi-touch is used more and more on many different devices and in many places, especially on handhelds but also on walls or tables in (semi) public space. Many people of all age and experiences have contact to multi-touch-devices. But it is not clear if all of them are familiar with the ways how to interact with such a multi-touch- device. Although many people commonly use virtual globes on their PCs to navigate the whole world, it is difficult for them to use a virtual globe on a multi-touch-table. This usability tests examined how a wide audience of untrained users in semi public space deal with a multi-touch-table on which a virtual globe is shown. We conducted the usability tests to introduce another form of human computer interaction. Especially for people who are not familiar with technical issues the multi-touch- devices could help them to interact with a computer. One could conjecture, the interaction is easier for them because it is very direct and they do need not use other input devices such as mouse and keyboard. As a consequence, it is very important that the system works as they suggest. So the gestures must be as intuitive as possible. Obviously we chose novice users to do the usability tests because they are not familiar with other multi-touch-devices. So they do not know the gestures which are implemented in other systems or could infer gestures on our multi-touch-table from their previous knowledge. Because of this they are most comparable to the mentioned user group which is not familiar with technical issues at all. We carried out our test not as a laboratory experiment but as a field study, because in this case we could ensure that the surroundings and the environment as similar as possible to the situation where such tables would be placed for the final usage.