Blog #3 Pen + Touch = New Tools

Paper Title: 

Pen + Touch = New Tools

Paper Authors: 

Ken Hinckley, Koji Yatani, Michel Pahud, Nicole Coddington, Jenny Rodenhouse, Andy Wilson, Hrvoje Benko, Bill Buxton

Author Bios:

-Ken Hinckley is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. His research is to enhance input vocabulary and incorporate the use of computational devices and user interfaces.

-Koji Yatani received his PhD from the University of Toronto. He is now part of the Human-Computer Interaction group at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing.

-Michel Pahud received his PhD in parallel computing from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He now works at Microsoft Resarch.

-Nicole Coddington is a Senior Interaction Designer at HTC.

-Jenny Rodenhouse is a Designer working for Microsoft in Seattle. Her current position is an Experience Designer II at the Xbox Interactive Entertainment Division in Microsoft.

-Andy Wilson is a senior researcher at Microsoft.

-Hrvoje Benko is a researcher at the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group at Microsoft Research. 

-Bill Buxton is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. 

Presentation Venue: 

This paper was presented  at UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.

Hypothesis: 

“The pen writes, touch manipulates, and the combination of pen + touch yields new tools”

The authors had an observational study that included eight people. They gathered feedback from an aditional 11 test users.

The results showed that most users prefered a division of the labor between pen and touch. However the users provided feedback that indicated they would like to use each interchangabely.

Summary: 

The authors identify nine key design considerations of pen+touch. They also observe people’s use of physical paper and notebooks and factor that into their results. Earlier studies on this topic involved either the use of pen OR the use of touch. A new generation of digitizers is now emerging though which can differentiate between pen and touch and thus enable the use of pen AND touch.

The authors then discuss how things can be written, and manipulated on the touch interface. After describing these, they describe some specific operations that were performed by their test users such as stapling, cutting, tearing. They then received feedback from the test users.

Discussion:

The authors introduced a new technology and the concept of using the pen AND touch to provide users with new tools. The studies they performed were comprehensive. A lot of what went into desiging this system was the observation of the people using their notebooks. This gave the authors insight on how to design a system that would work for most idividuals.

Most touch screen tablets and mobile phones no longer use a "pen" Most now rely entirely on touch input. This might seem more convenient to certain users. This research is interesting because it attempts to bridge the gap between using just touch or just "pen" input. Sometimes while using "touch" devices I would like to use a pen, and visa versa.