Survey of Pen-and-Paper Computing - Human-Computer Interaction - page 45

Fig. 2.10 Interaction Lens
of the A-Book for accessing
digital content directly within
the physical notebook (photo
courtesy of Wendy Mackay)
the illusion of a transparent PDA for any orientation. The Interaction Lens acts as
a window between the physical and the digital documents. It overlays the physical
contents with additional digital information, such as hyperlinks. It is not only used
for visualizing contents, but also for interacting with the notebook, such as for creat-
ing hyperlinks or for adding passages to the table of contents. Hence, the Interactive
Lens seamlessly integrates physical and digital information, but only on the small
screen of the PDA which must be moved over the page to successively view the
digital contents of the entire page. While the concept of the Interaction Lens per se
is mobile, the A-Book prototype is not, since it relies on a stationary technical setup
for capturing pen traces and the position of the PDA, using a digitizing tablet.
ButterflyNet [176] is an augmented notebook for field biologists. It improved
upon the A-Book by contributing a set of interaction techniques that allow users
to easily link from the notebook to digital resources without requiring a computer.
For instance, photos taken with a digital photo camera are automatically added to the
digital version of the notebook and aligned with the handwritten contents using their
timestamps. Optionally the user can also perform a specific pen gesture to integrate a
photo at a specific position within the digital version of the notebook. Moreover, it is
possible to easily create links to physical objects, such as specimen collected in the
field. The user has first to place the object into an envelope that a barcode is printed
on. By taking a photograph of the barcode, the link is established. An important
advantage here is that all activities can be done with the paper notebook - no manual
post-processing of the digital version is necessary. The ButterflyNet software viewer
then provides access to a digital version of the notebook that includes the photos
(Fig. 2.11 left). Memento [168] is a hybrid physical and digital scrapbook that uses
a similar concept for embedding pictures and videos.
Prism [149] is an augmented paper notebook that also targets biologists. The
focus is here on the feature-rich Web-based digital version of the notebook into
which handwritten notes are automatically integrated. In addition to a digital copy
of the handwritten notes, the Web-based version can contain typewritten notes as
well as hyperlinks to Web pages, e-mails and local documents or snapshot images