Augmenting paper-based work practices Sara Ljungblad, Maria Håkansson, Lars Erik Holmquist Future Applications Lab Viktoria Institute, Göteborg www.viktoria.se/fal { saral, mariah, leh}@viktoria.se Magnus Bång, Erik Berglund, Anders Larsson Santa Anna IT Research Institute Linköping, Sweden www.santaanna.se {magba, eribe, andla}@ida.liu.se ABSTRACT Paper artefacts are considered invaluable in many work settings and they are often used for overview in collaboration. In such cases, augmenting paper with computer power can be a suitable approach to gain digital benefits while still keeping the paper-based practices. However, augmenting paper introduces new physical and digital challenges, both for the designers and the users. We have compared two different research systems that augment paper and discuss emerging design challenges on augmented paper approaches. Keywords augmenting paper, NOSTOS, Pin&Play, ubiquitous computing, scheduling tasks INTRODUCTION Augmentation of paper-based routines is an important step in the computerization of human work practices. Several studies of collaborative work have showed that paper objects are very supportive, giving users control, flexibility, and overview of information in ways that are difficult to achieve with computer technology [1,8]. However, digital benefits such as trace- and search-ability of documents are almost impossible to achieve with solutions based on paper only. Ubicomp technology makes it possible to use paper as the interface to computers, and augment paper-based work processes. When connecting paper-based information systems with digital information, new requirements and challenges arise. RELATED WORK In the past years, there have been several attempts to design technology that facilitates the use of tangible objects in face-to-face group collaboration. Collaborage is a system that uses computer vision to augment physical objects with digital information, so that paper notes are tagged with data glyphs [7]. RASA is another example, using speech support and tracking of Post-it™ notes on a chart [6]. Both [6,7] illustrate concerns that arise when designing such systems, for example the importance of feedback of the system’s progress, minimal changes to the existing work practice and robustness. We have compared two different augmented paper systems; NOSTOS [2], that supports the scheduling of patients in an emergency room, and a Pin&Play-based prototype [3] that supports the scheduling of a film festival (see figure 1). This comparison has generated common challenges and requirements, which can be valuable for other systems that aim to support collaboration and augmented paper practices. CASE STUDIES The two compared systems were preceded by fieldwork in two different settings, briefly described below. Emergency room We have studied the paper-based collaborative work in an emergency room in a middle-sized Swedish hospital, where the nurses plan ahead and prioritize patients according to the seriousness of their condition. The scheduling is performed by physically arranging the patient folders on a table, which provides an overview of the current patient priorities. That is, the schedule at the desk is created to display the current state of patients at the emergency room. The desk with its folders is an example of a convenient, dynamic and never-ending way of representing the situation at the emergency room. Film festival office The other study involved a team of 4-7 people, who schedule 500-700 films for the Göteborg film festival [4]. Three walls in the landscape-office setting is gradually filled with colored paper notes, where each note represents a film and is placed on a certain time, cinema and day. The team also works during the year to prepare and collect information about potential films. The physical scheduling on the wall commences a few months before the festival. Figure 1. The NOSTOS system augmenting patient records (left) and a Pin&Play augmented paper note, representing a film(right).