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- The interface (see the home page) uses the user mental model of chatting, calling and video calling
- Most popular tool used by people for international calling is Skype -- this user interface is consistent with Skype interface
- Auto-highlighting of locations is consistent with hovering affordance (people are likely to hover over highlighted text)
- Consistent choice of keys (arrows for camera angels, page up and page down for altitude and W,S,A,D for movement)
Efficiency
- For direct manipulation -- only keyboard inputs (navigation controls, camera controls and altitude) to avoid switching latency (switching time between keyboard/mouse)
- Avoids any effect of mouse sensitivity
- Allows random exploration (the text box on the top allows any valid location as an input) -- jumping from SFO to Boston is very easy.
- Autosuggest, and auto-complete
Safety
- For screen 3: if location recognizer fails to recognize a location or recognizes wrong location, user can change it. Also, there is auto-suggest.
- The interface is extremely safe because use can change location, camera angle, altitude, direction at any point of time as per their choice.
- A complete freedom for navigation -- (if you moved a little far ahead, you can come back, if altitude is not perfect, you can change the altitude). It provides safety against all user errors.