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Swiping paper: the second hand, mundane artifacts, gesture and collaboration

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Abstract

It is widely recognised that paper remains a pervasive resource for collaboration and yet there has been uncertain progress in developing technologies that aim to enhance paper documents with computational capabilities. In this article, we discuss the design of a technology that interweaves developments in hardware and materials, electronics and software, and seeks to create new affinities between digital content and paper. The design of the technology drew from findings from naturalistic studies of the uses of paper, particularly when considering how ‘users’ might ‘interact’ with the augmented technology. We briefly review these studies and discuss the results of an evaluation of the emerging technology. Analysis of the fine details of the conduct of participants in these assessments suggest how, even when we design simple forms of interaction with a device, these can be shaped and transformed by the participation and collaboration of others.

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Acknowledgments

The work reported here was undertaken within the EU Funded Projects: Paper++ (IST-2000-26130), SuperInks (IST-2001-38770) and PaperWorks (IST-FP6-516895). Our thanks to colleagues on these projects, in particular David Frohlich, David Harrison, Lars-Olov Hennerdal, Moira Norrie, Anurak Sawatdee, Tommi Remonen, Rachel Murphy, Abi Sellen, Beat Signer, Ella Tallyn and Nadir Weibel. We are also grateful to the officers in the EU Commission, the participating organisations and associated institutions for all their help and support in undertaking the project, and the anonymous reviewers who provided very useful comments. We would also like to thank the participants in the experiments for their patience and assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. King’s College, London, 150 Stamford Street, London, UK

    Paul Luff & Christian Heath

  2. Bielefeld University, Universitätsstr. 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany

    Karola Pitsch

  3. ArjoWiggins SAS, Butler’s Court, Beaconsfield, UK

    Peter Herdman

  4. Department of Design and Systems Engineering, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK

    Julian Wood

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  1. Paul Luff
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  2. Karola Pitsch
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  3. Christian Heath
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  4. Peter Herdman
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  5. Julian Wood
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Correspondence to Paul Luff.

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Luff, P., Pitsch, K., Heath, C. et al. Swiping paper: the second hand, mundane artifacts, gesture and collaboration. Pers Ubiquit Comput 14, 287–299 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-009-0253-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-009-0253-4

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