Pen + Touch = New Tools

Authors:
Ken Hinckley: Microsoft Researcher
Koji Yatani: Graduate student of University of Toronto
Michel Pahud: Microsoft Researcher
Nicole Coddington: Senior designed at HTC, previously with Microsoft
Jenny Rodenhouse: Works on Microsoft XBox
Andy Wilson: Microsoft Researcher
Hrvoje Benko: Researcher from Microsoft
Bill Buxton: Microsoft Researcher

Summary:
Hypothesis:
The test here was to attempt to see if a user reacted positively to attempting to interact with both a pen and touch on a screen. This would allow for many more possible features and ways to manipulate a touch screen interface

Methods:
Subjects were required to past storyboard clippings together on a notebook to make a file storyboard. These actions were observed and many of the methods used in this process were taken into account when creating the project. This was implemented on a Microsoft Surface

Results:
Many different issues were found that were not really expected. One of the main issues that was found was the way that users would hold clippings in a non-dominant hand or the hand along with the pen. This presented some difficulty in how to best replicate that process in an intuitive way. Initially the users were confused about how to do certain tasks, but once shown they seemed to pick it up easily. Stapling was a very popular feature. Tucking the pen under the hand is something that did not translate well to the surface. Users would have problems with the pen and the best way to place it when it was not actively being used.

Contents:
The researches in this paper attempted to combine both pens and touch commands. This allowed for them to explore many different options for touch commands. It also was a good study into how users would respond to being required to use commands and motions that were foreign to them, and how quickly they would adapt to their use. Because the system was designed off of interactions with humans and notebooks it very strongly resembles a sheet of paper in how it operates. Users can move between pages, cut out sections of a page or even 'staple' a page so that it could not be turned.

Discussion:
Here we find a great example of innovation in the use of touch interfaces. Here we attempted to recreate, digitally, a medium of information collection that has been used through the ages, and several things were observed. First off is that there are great benefits to being able to a piece of technology like this. Many things such as erasing and moving sections of text become much easier. Organizing notes and being space efficient also was a much easier task to accomplish on the platform and i believe could one day be something that is more common on tablet PCs. If this type of technology were to take off then we would have a much better availability of online notes from professors. We would also be able to collaborate on problems and projects much easier if this were adapted to, say, Google docs style simultaneous editing. Many different possibilities exist for this project and hopefully it will become more common and the years go on.