Marble/Devices and Use Cases

This table shows the importance of certain use cases on different device form factors. See the sections below for an explanation of the use cases and device form factors. The importance is separated into three different levels: Main for primary features, Relevant for useful, but not essential features and Subsidiary for features that are rarely needed or do not apply to a certain device form factor.

Use case	Desktop	Notebook	Smartphone	Tablet	TV	Vehicle	Plane
Exploration	Main		Relevant	Main	Main	Subsidiary	Subsidiary
Measuring	Relevant		Subsidiary	Relevant	Relevant	Subsidiary	Subsidiary
Search	Main		Relevant	Main	Relevant	Relevant	Subsidiary
GPS Tracking	Subsidiary		Main	Relevant	Subsidiary	Main	Main
Route Planning	Relevant		Main	Main	Relevant	Main	Subsidiary
Guidance Mode	Subsidiary		Main	Relevant	Subsidiary	Main	Subsidiary
Offline Usage	Subsidiary		Relevant	Relevant	Subsidiary	Main	Main

Device form factors

• Desktop: The classical desktop computer system
• Smartphone
• Notebook
• Tablet: Devices with about 7"-10" touchscreens and additional sensors (GPS, accelerometers)
• TV: Set top boxes using a TV as display, often full-HD resolution
• Vehicle: In-vehicle infotainment and "carputers" fixed to a vehicle. But not smartphones or tablets used in a vehicle for just a short period of time!
• Plane: In-flight entertainment systems

Use Cases

Exploration

The user starts the Marble application to find out more about a certain region or city that interests him/her or just to explore the world. In this digital world atlas mode the spherical projection is mostly useful.

Main features include:

• spherical projection
• coordinate grid
• overview map themes
• country/city search
• animated movement (jump to target)
• wikipedia integration
• bookmarks

Distribution

• Linux distributions
• Windows
• MacOS
• Maemo
• Meego
• Android

Implementation

Marble Touch on MeeGo Smartphones

Developed by Daniel Marth during Google Summer of Code 2011. User interface ideas (under development): On startup a "home screen" is shown that lines up a couple of possible activities. Each activity is represented by its name and an icon, aligned in a grid. Selecting any activity brings the user to the main screen. The main screen adjusts itself to the chosen activity and provides a way to go back to the home screen and related activities. Most activities display a map (MarbleWidget) as the main widget, but that's not always the case (e.g. during configuration).

Planned activities are as follows:

• Virtual Globe
  • Activates spherical projection, a satellite map.
  • Easy way to switch to other map themes.
  • Easy way to enable wikipedia and photo plugin.
  • Distance measuring should be possible.
• Drive
  • Motorcar route planning
  • OSM map, merkator projection.
  • Related activities: Guidance
• Cycle
  • Bicycle route planning.
  • OSM map, merkator projection.
  • Related activities: Guidance
• Walk
  • Pedestrian route planning.
  • OSM map, merkator projection.
  • Related activities: Guidance
• Guidance
  • Voice guidance during a journey.
  • Precedence: Known route.
  • OSM map, merkator projection.
  • Related activities: Drive, Cycle, Walk
• Search
  • Textual search for cities, addresses, POIs, ...
  • Easy way to enable wikipedia and photo plugin
  • Related activities: Bookmarks, Around Me
• Bookmarks
  • Access to the bookmarks
  • Related activities: Search, Around Me
• Around Me
  • Activates merkator projection, OSM map, GPS.
  • Searches for POIs and displays them. Search area: Around GPS position if known, current viewport otherwise
  • Optional category filtering.
  • Easy way to enable wikipedia and photo plugin
  • Related activities: Search, Bookmarks
• Weather
  • Activates spherical projection, a satellite map and the weather plugin
• Tracking
  • Activates merkator projection, OSM map, GPS
  • GPS track is automatically recorded.
• Geocaching
  • Activates merkator projection and OSM map
  • Activates GPS and the opencaching plugin.
  • Easy way to enable wikipedia and photo plugin
  • Related activities: Biking, Walking
• Friends
  • Activates the open desktop plugin (needs to be extended: at least login and).
  • Possibly other future plugins (e.g. google latitude)
• Download
  • Download of map tiles, offline maps, voice guidance speakers etc for offline usage
• Configuration
  • Tweak various settings