Intro -
Title:
PaperSketch: A Paper-Digital Collaborative Remote Sketching Tool
Reference Information:
IUI '11 Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces
Author Bios:
Dr. Nadir Weibel, Ph.D.
Postdctoral Researcher
Department of Cognitive Science
University of California, San Diego
Distributed Cognition and Human-Computer Interaction Lab
Ubiquitous Computing and Social Dynamics Research Group
Beat Signer
Professor of Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium
Co-director of the Web and Information System Engineering (WISE) Laboratory
Investigating interactive paper solutions, multimodal and multi-touch interaction.
Moira C. Norrie
Professor at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
Use of Object-Oriented and Web Technologies for Next Generation Information Systems
One of few Leading Research Groups on Technologies for Interactive Paper
Hermann Hofstetter
Could not find any Information regarding this Author.
Hans-Christian Jetter
PhD Researcher at Information Systems University of Konstanz
Interests in Cognitive Foundations of “Natural” User Interfaces
Harald Reiterer
Professor at Information Systems University of Konstanz
Department of Computer and Information Science
Summary -
Sketching with paper and pencil has been a long used method for "rapid capture of visual information to be shared in the simplest possible way." This paper documents the research and development of a collaborative sketching tool PaperSketch which aims to enable synchronous editing of a diagram or sketch. Since no methods currently exist that can actually capture and print to paper whilst the paper is still being used, the paper pad in this program is actually a virtual whiteboard and the data is shared via an underlying communication layer based on Skype.
Related Work (not referenced in paper) -
- Paper Augmented Digital Documents - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=964702
- Paper Windows: Interaction Techniques for Digital Paper - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1055054
- Bridging the Paper and Electronic Worlds: The Paper User Interface - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=164986
- SmartSkin: An Infrastructure for Freehand Manipulation on Interactive Surfaces - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=503397
- Capturing the Capture Concepts: A Case Study in the Design of Computer-Supported Meeting Environments - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=62287
- Beyond the Chalkboard: Computer Support for Collaboration and Problem Solving in Meetings - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=7887
- Use of Drawing Surfaces in Different Collaborative Settings - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=62286
- HandJive: A Device for Interpersonal Haptic Entertainment - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=274653
- Managing a Trois: A Study of a Multi-User Drawing Tool in Distributed Design Work - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=108893
- Shared Workspaces: How Do They Work and When are they Useful? - http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=182800
The paper sufficiently documented studies done in collaborative sketching, but I found additional papers that would add additional value to the PaperSketch Project such as haptic feedback. Also, although not noted in the paper, a lot of research has been done to try to digitize paper in order to produce sketches on it whilst someone is still sketching but nothing has been quite as successful as a digital collaborative whiteboard.
Evaluation -
This paper was designed as a research topic to determine what design professionals desire out of collaborative environments. All the feedback attained was qualitative and wholly subjective. The authors developed a collaborative environment, but used digital pens to capture movement as sketches were drawn. Once someone was done sketching other updates were also uploaded to their view. Roughly 90% of participants in the study said they would use a similar tool for remote sketching based on a pen and paper interface. It does not explicitly say a Likery scale was used, but from my understanding they asked open-ended questions to help mold the development of the work space.
Discussion -
Although a variety of research has been done in the area of collaborative digital environments, it's seemingly difficult to translate that to the physical world. This study helped refine the development of a tool to enable sharing of sketches on physical mediums. Unfortunately, the shared GUI is only viewed and isn't actually transmitted back to the users until after they finish a portion of their sketch. The users in the study enjoyed the idea of this shared GUI but since it would block other users from updating it while another user was, it was not synchronous but rather sequentially building a collaborative sketch. I could see this being used to jot down rough design concepts, but this is far from a tool I would actually see being used by professional design artists.
