Despite advances in the design of smaller and more powerful tablet-like computers, the often-touted "paperless office" remains elusive. On the contrary, consumption of paper is on the rise and, with only few exceptions, office work still relies heavily on this medium. At the root of this apparent paradox is the wide gap between paper affordances, (e.g., ease of navigation and annotation, and high information density display), and digital document affordances, (e.g., ease of distribution, archiving, and search). In this research the PI will investigate how to bridge this gap, by focusing on combining the affordances of paper on the one hand and digital document on the other, with respect to navigation, annotation, displaying large quantities of information, and information processing. To do so, the PI will adopt a 3-pronged approach:
Paper track. Paper is an inexpensive static medium well adapted for navigating and annotating large quantities of information, but it lacks information processing capability. The PI's Paper Augmented Digital Document system will study how new technology such as the Anoto digital pen system can bring digital affordances to paper. This track will focus on cohabitation between the digital and the paper world, using paper as transient support for digital documents when paper affordances are needed.
Tablet computer track. The PI's Next Generation Tablet PC project will provide paper-like document navigation techniques on tablet computers using tangible and haptic interfaces. It will also address the inherent lack of screen real estate on tablet computers, by exploring how small clusters of tablet computers that can be created on the fly may serve as portals to different documents.
Interactive surfaces track. Interactive surfaces provide large display areas and can tap into large computational resources such as computational clusters. Unfortunately, they typically lack efficient document navigation tools. Using the Maryland Interactive Table as a testbed for his experiments, the PI will explore how new tracking technology can deliver better document navigation on horizontal interactive surfaces.
For each track, the PI's goal is to build a prototype advanced enough to serve one common task: supporting a small group of people in creating and improving a document, such as the proposal on which this award is based! Integrating data from the different tracks will provide a unique opportunity to analyze the differences and similarities among the approaches. The PI believes that such side-by-side comparisons are the key to a sound, scientific exploration of the design parameters relevant for providing efficient navigation, access to large quantities of information, and access to computational resources. In particular, he expects this research to provide answers to questions such as the following: What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of paper-based vs. digital interactions? What are the patterns of paper use in real-life settings, and how do they compare with findings from ethnographic studies? What are the best ways to reproduce paper navigation affordances on portable devices and interactive surfaces? How does the introduction of digital equivalents of paper influence information foraging pattern as well as social patterns (e.g., in small groups)?
Broader Impacts: This project will impact how people perform numerous common tasks such as proofreading documents, making notes on large format documents such as blueprints, navigating through digital documents, and conducting meetings using interactive surfaces. The techniques developed in this project will also impact the field of human computer interaction in general, by providing valuable insights into how to design efficient tangible interfaces and better two-handed interfaces for interactive surfaces. Graduate students will be involved in all aspects of this work, and will be encouraged to explore interdisciplinary projects combining hardware and software design, interaction design, and methodical comparison between different design
