# Augmenting Industrial Control Rooms with Multimodal Collaborative Interaction Techniques
## 3 The Augmented Digital Control Room
### The Digital Boardroom  
As a joint effort of the research partners Next Vision GmbH and Weidmuller Interface GmbH & Co. KG as well as the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences and Arts, we have designed the digital boardroom, which focuses on business analytics integrated in smart meeting rooms [19]. Figure 2 shows one configuration of the digital boardroom. Three multitouch-enabled monitors constitute a shared display space. Of course, this space is not limited to three monitors, but this fits nicely to [PERSON]'s Visual Information Seeking Mantra: Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand [21].  
Therefore, in this configuration the first monitor on the left of the figure gives an overview about a company's relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) presenting their development over time. Each KPI is visualized in a special tile that can be decoupled out of the layout, resized, and annotated. Each tile is implemented as a multitouch object so that gestures can be used for the different interactions. This can be done by one or several users simultaneously as shown in Figure 2. Annotation visibility can be turned on and off as needed. The second screen shows the result of a _drill down_ operation on one of the KPIs. In the OLAP (_Online Analytical Processing_) sense this means that a more granular view of the multidimensional data is shown [13], e.g., how _income_ as KPI is divided among specific regions. The third screen on the right shows further details on the selected KPI, e.g., value drivers as well as additional contextual information. For example, we integrated a software component for planning purposes and \"what-if\" analyses based on the multidimensional data.  
Multitouch-enabled displays can be arranged in a room, e.g., to constitute an interactive wall. Another possibility is to use such a display as a meeting table (cf. Figure 3 on the right). Meeting participants can interact with the multitouch screens collaboratively. By using the proposed annotation-enhanced dashboards participants are supported in discussing and obtaining a shared understanding of the business data. The first prototype was based on the Business Intelligence (BI) suite IBM Cognos\({}^{\circledR}\) Analytics 11 as well as HTML 5 and JavaScript for the multitouch and multiuser interaction.  
Figure 1: The Augmented Digital Control Room: Multimodal Collaborative Interaction Techniques.  
Figure 2: The Digital Boardroom: A Configuration.  
In collaboration with the company Next Vision GmbH, we have extended the digital boardroom with support for body gestures and speech commands [9]. The prototypical implementation integrates Microsoft Kinect(r) to identify body gestures and Microsoft Cortana(r) to recognize speech commands. First interviews with students revealed that for KPIs it has been easy for the interviewees to name potential speech commands whereas for switching screens, navigating through charts or through the multidimensional data model, there was a tendency to propose body gestures, such as moving a hand from left to right. For annotating diagrams, the multitouch features have been the preferred ones. In general, a multimodal environment supporting a personalized way of interaction is helpful.