Ken Hinckley, Koji Yatani, Michel Pahud, Nicole Coddington, Jenny Rodenhouse, Andy Wilson, Hrvoje Benko, and Bill Buxton
Ken Hinckley is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and has a PhD from the University of Virginia.
Koji Yatani is a PhD student at the University of Toronto and will work at Microsoft Research after graduation.
Michel Pahud is a researcher at Microsoft Research and has a PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Nicole Coddington is a Senior Interaction Designer at HTC and is a former employee of Microsoft.
Jenny Rodenhouse currently works in the Interactive Entertainment Division of Microsoft after attending school at Syracuse University and the University of Washington.
Andy Wilson is a researcher at Microsoft Research and has a PhD from MIT Media Laboratory.
Hrvoje Benko is a researcher at Microsoft Research and has a PhD from Columbia University.
Bill Buxton is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and has an M.S. from the University of Toronto.
This paper was presented at the UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.
Summary
In this paper, researchers from Microsoft Research closely observe how people use pen and paper in order to create an interface that makes sense on a digital surface. Through this observation, the researchers hope to create an intuitive and simple way for interaction with digital surfaces in the future without having to train users how to use it. The hypothesis for this study is that through careful study, a very efficient and easy-to-use interface can be created for use on tablets, and other such devices, that makes sense for use by all.
The first project performed by the researchers consisted of a study of participants that were asked to make a scrapbook and given the tools to do so. The researchers notices 9 common attributes that can later be used when designing an application to perform the same task that the participants were asked to do.
They decided that the best approach to using pen and touch input would be to separate the two by having the pen write and touch manipulate. After implementing basic functions (zoom, cut, paste, etc.), the researchers began to explore what new tools they could implement by combining pen and touch input where it makes sense for a user to do so. Following this mindset, stapling, tearing, copying, and much more were implemented based on the earlier study gave the application a sense of robustness without feeling overly complicated and unfamiliar.
Participants were then asked to use the new application to perform similar tasks as the first group did and give their feedback. Most users commented on the appealing nature of the interactions and responded well to the experience. The methods for accessing certain functions were not self revealing and required instruction which had been predicted by the researchers.
The researchers conclude that their concept of "the pen writes, touch manipulates, and pen + touch yields new tools" stands up to the test and can be adapted with further study and research but the ultimate answer will not be created by developers but rather defined by what people already do.
Discussion
I think the researchers achieved their goal by effectively showing that rather than creating new tools for people to use, we should study what is already being done and adapt to that standard to gain usefulness. This paper is interesting because rather than provide a direct product it produces the idea that developers should form around convention rather than creation. I think the weakest point in this work is that this study was performed on a very small scale with no more than 12 people during either of the studies. That being said, the researchers pulled an immense amount of data out of those small samples. I think the future will be paved with research like this given how popular tablets are becoming.
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