When no user is connected to our system, it will show some demos of its functionality. It will highlight some interesting map points from its database, and will show the information on the info pane. It will be like someone is interacting with our system to find out information about some places. These demos will serve two purposes. First they will give visibility of the system functionality to a new user. If a user is looking at the demo he will have the idea about what to expect from the system. When this demo is on, the viewers will also get assertion that they can connect to the system anytime, and find out their required information.

The second purpose of these demo interaction is to give some information about the city and places to the ‘not so interested users’. Our system will be located at an underground station, and there are always some viewers there, who are not interested enough to interact with the system, but would like to have some useful information while they are waiting for the trains. Thus our system also serves the functionality of a non-interactive information display when it’s idle. But the interactive system gets higher priority and as soon as someone is connected with the system, it will turn to a interactive system.

The user can take a photo of the screen with his mobile phone, and he will be connected with the system. He can select single or multiple layers by clicking on the Layers name. The whole name of the layers will work as checkbox, so the user can click on any portion of it. As this will cover much more space than only the checkbox itself, the user can easily click on it.

The user can also filter out the lists of displayed map points by typing the place of his interest in his mobile phone. The list will be filtered out as he is typing. So he may not need to type the whole name but only first one or two letters. If filtered out result is only a single map point (by typing the whole or partial name) and if the user presses “OK” button in his mobile phone, that map point will be selected and the information about it will be showed in the info pane. Otherwise, if there are multiple filtered results available, the user can select the map point by clicking [1] on it from the list.

The user can also zoom in and zoom out using his mobile phone. When he takes his mobile phone closer to the map, it will give him a zoom in view on the center of the map. And when he takes it further away from the map, it will zoom out. This resembles with our everyday use of a real map. When we use a real map, and want to have a closer look, we move our head towards it and when we want to have a look on a greater portion of the map, we move our head backwards. Thus this gives a clear natural mapping on how to zoom in and zoom out.

When the user clicks on a specific map points, an info pane is displayed. The user can hide this pane by clicking on any part of the map outside this pane. The user can also click on the close button on the top right corner of the info pane to hide it. When the user hides the info pane (by clicking on the map or on the close button) it will slide to the right side, and only about 10% of the info pane will remain visible. The user can click on this partial view of the info pane to make it reappear. As this info pane will slide to the right, the user will know where it went, and where to find it back. The user can also click the map point again to display the same info pane.

The user can terminate the connection with CityWindow explicitly by pressing the “Cancel” button on his mobile phone. The connection will also be terminated if there is no interaction from the user for 20 seconds. When there is no interaction from the user for 15 seconds, it will show a warning on the CityWindow and after 20 seconds the connection will be closed.

[1] We define click on any part of the city window as bring the cursor on top of any specified point on the city window by mobile phone gestures and then press the “OK” button of the mobile phone.