Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 4.2
Examples of inexpensive tangible tools that are made of paper
of this technology). The pen is not only used to interact with printed documents and
paper tools, but also as a stylus to interact with digital media that are displayed on
screens.
Furthermore, CoScribe offers various specialized tangible tools, for instance
menu cards, folders and index stickers (see Fig. 4.2). In contrast to the tangible
tools used in typical Tangible User Interfaces, our tools are made of paper and
moreover do not require additional electronic components besides the digital pen.
For these reasons, an ordinary printer suffices to create a large number of tangi-
ble tools quickly and at very low cost. CoScribe includes a print toolkit that allows
end-users to easily print tools and documents. The toolkit adds the Anoto pattern
to the printouts and automatically manages the association between the digital con-
tents and their physical positions on the printouts. This is necessary for mapping pen
interactions on paper to the underlying digital contents. All interaction techniques
of CoScribe make consistent use of the core interactions presented in the previous
chapter.
4.3 Synchronized Paper Documents and Digital Visualizations
Users can print digital documents onto real paper and interact with them using an
digital pen. Due to the Anoto technology, it is possible to simultaneously work with
several sheets of paper and to use the same pen on all of them without additional
effort. This provides for a very natural working style.
While paper provides for a flexible use of documents, there might be situations
in which the user prefers working with a digital version of a document. For example
full text search as well as audio and video contents are better supported by digital
documents. Moreover, digital visualizations allow the user to access shared annota-
tions of other users in real-time. For these reasons, CoScribe does not only support
printed documents. The user can access a digital version of any document in a soft-
