A display (whiteboard, blackboard, chart, map, whatever) can serve the dual purpose of establishing that the characters are evaluating information and providing quick exposition for the audience. This trope includes tabletop maps where people use a "croupier stick" to move around counters. It also includes a "vertical plotting board". That's the clear piece of glass or plastic that, in the real world, is written on with a grease pencil backwards on warships. In fact, transparent versions are way more common in fiction than in reality -- in the real world, their use is limited by the fact that they're hard to read, but in film and television they're frequently used as a way to get shots that include the actors' faces. Also included are dioramas, which are simply models of buildings or areas