Blog - Paper Reading #3: Pen + touch = new tools

Reference:


Authors:
Ken Hinckley         Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA
Koji Yatani         Microsoft Research & University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Michel Pahud         Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA
Nicole Coddington     Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA
Jenny Rodenhouse     Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA
Andy Wilson         Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA
Hrvoje Benko         Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA
Bill Buxton         Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

Published in:
UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology

Summary:


This paper considers the applications and benefits of using what the authors call "simultaneous pen+touch" technology which is an interface that allows users to manipulate it via a touch pen and their fingers.  They say that most other technologies focus on one of these input methods and ignores or disallows the other.  The primary medium they use to discuss this is the Microsoft Surface because like mentioned before, most devices don't allow both pen and touch based input.  The authors state it is not their intent to recreate paper and pen onto the Microsoft Surface, but instead, to use the natural movements and gestures inherit in paper and pen input as a base for creating an easy to use.  The test users of this system found many of the input gestures and methods very logical and natural to use.  The only issues they ran into were the specially designed designed gesture set which had to be explained to them.


Discussion:


As with the last article, this technology is fascinating and I wish the Microsoft Surface was more accessible to the general public.  The problem with it, at least to me, is many of the applications are remakes of cheap real life games or could be done with paper and pen.  Hopefully this research will help make the Surface easier to use and open up the range of applications that could be developed for it.