Steimle J. Pen-and-Paper User Interfaces. Integrating Printed and Digital Documents

Springer, 2012. — 202 p.The mass deployment of Smart Phones, Netbooks, and Web tablets has made computing essentially pervasive and ubiquitous – yet to date, there is only one truly ubiquitous information processing technology: pen and paper. Imagine the wealth of paper variants that may populate the venue of a creative and information-centered workshop: little Post-it notes and snippets, sturdy colored cards, numerous piles of memos and notes, groupings of bound or stapled documents, annotated leaflets and brochures, journals and magazines along with ready-made, commented laser copies of relevant contents, binders and folders full of classified information, flipcharts and wall-covering series of charts and other drawings, not to mention waste baskets, full to the brim with torn and crumpled sheets. the list is endless. And it is still a long way to go until we can use and afford computers in the same quantity and variety, and with such simplicity and carelessness.
On the other hand, computers can handle information in a way that paper will never be able to: store and archive in ‘infinite’ quantity with an ever smaller footprint, search and analyze, transmit, copy, and share at virtually no cost at lightning speed, edit and interconnect,. again, the list is endless. Given these considerations about the uniqueness and ubiquity of both paper and computers, the present book is long since overdue: a thorough, concise, and well-organized compendium of marriages between paper based and electronic documents.
This book, a revised and extended version of Jurgen Steimle’s award-winning computer science dissertation, provides the reader with a broad and extensive overview of the field. The state of the art is covered in a most up to date, complete, and systematic way, so as to provide the full picture of pen-and-paper computing like no other reference before.
The contributions made with regard to modeling the interaction with pen-and-paper interfaces provide an unprecedented theoretical foundation and organization of the subject matter, helping to structure and order the problem and design spaces in a rather unique way. The book proposes information ecologies as the appropriate theoretical perspective for designing pen-and-paper interfaces. This involves taking a broad view and looking at all the ingredients that largely influence the interplay of humans and machines in the context of information handling: current and related documents, cognitive and social networks, past actions and future-oriented intentions. The author presents an elegant ‘building set’ of core interactions helpful in designing solutions that address the diversity of such ecologies.
Retaining the holistic approach of the book, the third part presents an integrated set of interaction techniques for the most relevant human document processing activities: collaboratively annotating, combining (linking), and classifying (tagging) documents. Here, the aforementioned systematic theoretical framework forms the basis for the cleanest and most flexible approach known in comparison to related work. Regarding cross-media annotation, the presented approach provides an impressive proof of the huge potential that lies in joining the individual strengths of the two technologies, paper and computing. As to combination i.e. hyperlinks, a rather small advancement in hardware is provided as a basis: the enabling of Anoto technology for use with both computer screens and traditional paper. This small technical contribution enables a huge effect with respect to eliminating seams and hurdles between the two technologies. Finally, concerning classification (tagging), the author provides smart and elegant means for tagging documents with predefined classes, but also with arbitrary tags that are defined on-the-fly. Here and in the aforementioned contributions, the author proves to be quite resourceful when it comes to leveraging the strengths of paper as a technology, such as the flexible interplay of many paper sheets, but also when it comes to coping with its limitations, such as the lack of inverse operations for writing or cutting.
In short, the present book promises to be an exciting source of information for IT professionals (trying to understand the cutting-edge field of pen-and-paper computing), researchers (interested in an overview of prior research and in the substantial original academic contributions presented in this book), and HCI experts (seeking insights into the comparatively young field of pen-and-paper computing as well as on the advancement of their field in general).Survey of Pen-and-Paper Computing
InteractionModel of Pen-and-Paper User Interfaces
CoScribe: A Platform for Paper-based Knowledge Work
Collaborative Cross-media Annotation of Documents
Hyperlinking between Printed and Digital Documents
Paper-based Tagging of Documents
Conclusions