Collaborative annotation sharing in physical and digital worlds

Abstract

Despite the existence of a plethora of annotating software for digital documents, many users still prefer reading and annotating them physically on paper. While others have proposed the idea of merging these two worlds, none of them fits all the design requirements identified in this paper (working in real-time, use readily available hardware, augment physical annotations with digital content, support annotation sharing and collaborative learning). In this paper we present the implemented prototype and a focus group study aimed at understanding studying habits and how the system would fit in these. The focus group revealed that paper material is often discarded or archived and annotations lost, web resources are not saved and fade with time, and that the prototype proposed fits in their studying habits and does not introduce any privacy concerns – be it ones related to the prototype’s camera (used in public setting) or ones related to annotations sharing.