Paper-based Tagging of Documents - Human-Computer Interaction - page 156

7.3 Tagging with Buttons
In Section 5.2, we have described how buttons from a toolbar, which is printed on
documents, can be used for defining the visibility of an annotation. CoScribe utilizes
the same interaction technique and visualization for enabling users to tag individ-
ual annotations with semantic categories. The interaction technique is illustrated in
Figs. 5.5 and 5.6 on p. 110f. This interaction is similar to applying tags using Tag
Menu Cards with the difference that categories are predefined and that the buttons
are printed on each document page, allowing for a quicker access.
CoScribe currently supports four semantic types, which were derived from the
needs identified in our field studies. These are Important , Question , To d o and Cor-
rection . Our approach also allows the user to select user-defined categories to be
contained in the toolbar. However, if the user introduces new types, sharing and ag-
gregation of annotations is more complicated due to the larger number of classes
which moreover other users might not understand.
7.4 Tangible Tagging of Processes
All tagging strategies presented above are used for tagging documents .Inorderto
structure and augment the collaborative work process , we propose a further concept:
tagging processes using tangible objects. This supports users in jointly tagging the
temporal phases of a co-located meeting. Such meetings often follow rather implicit,
but predefined phases, for example starting by collecting all topics to discuss in a
meeting, then discussing each topic in turn and finally planning tasks to perform
until the next meeting.
Enabling the user to make these implicit phases more explicit by tagging pro-
cesses has two main advantages. First, the system can temporally index and struc-
ture the users' activities (use of documents, annotations, links and tags) by attribut-
ing them to individual phases. This allows for a structured access. Second, the act of
tagging itself is a meta-cognitive learning scaffold. Unexperienced learners might
not know how to efficiently structure a meeting. To state two examples, they might
not define clear goals for the meeting or they might be unaware of the importance
of writing a protocol which contains main outcomes of the meeting. Offering spe-
cific types of phases which have proven to be important in meetings can stimulate
users to follow these phases. Moreover, by stimulating users to explicitly specify the
phase they are currently in, the system supports the meta-processes of negotiating
and making joint decisions about the process structure.
The interaction technique aims at enabling users to specify the type of the pro-
cess phase in which they are at the moment. Each time the group proceeds to a
subsequent phase, the users indicate the new phase by manipulating a shared repre-
sentation. For this reason, the system can temporally structure the users' activities
(use of documents, annotations, links and tags) by attributing them to individual
phases.