Paper Reading #3: Pen + Touch = New Tools

References:
Ken Hinckley, et al. "Pen + Touch = New Tools". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

Author Bios:
Ken Hinckley received his Ph. D. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia and is currently a researcher at Microsoft. His main focus is touch sensors and pen/touch interaction.

Koji Yatani is currently a Ph. D. student at the University of Toronto. He assisted in this research as an intern, and will work for Microsoft after graduation.

Michel Pahud received his Ph. D. in parallel computing from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and is currently a research at Microsoft. His area of interest is in distributed collaboration and pen/touch experience.

Nicole Coddington received her bachelor's in Visual Communication from Florida State University. A past Senior Interaction Designer at Microsoft, she now works for HTC. She is interested in NUI design for mobile devices.

Jenny Rodenhouse received her bachelor's from Syracuse University, and is currently a designer at Microsoft.

Andy Wilson received his Ph. D. from MIT and is currently a senior researcher at Microsoft. He is interested in innovating new styles of HCI.

Hrvoje Benko got his Ph. D. from Cornell University and is a researcher at Microsoft. His focus is on surface computing technology.

Bill Buxton received a degree in music from Queen's University. He starting designing his own musical instruments, which ultimately led him to pursue a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Toronto. He is now the Principal Researcher at Microsoft.

Summary:

• Hypothesis -  That an input method using both pen and touch is more natural for users and allows for much more functionality than just one or the other.
• Method - The main method employed during this work involved observing subjects create a scrapbook. They provided raw materials and a subject matter (such as a documentary) to create a scrapbook with. They then observed the ways in which the test subjects interacted with the tools, the paper, and how they used their hands in particular to manipulate their surroundings.
  
  
  Based upon this study, they then proceeded to design a system that mimics as much of their natural movements and instincts as possible.
• Results - The results were indistinct. While the application itself was a success and the users mostly gave positive reviews, the hypothesis itself was never fully addressed. The paper mostly concentrated on the software and its functions.
• Contents - As stated above, the contents of this paper mostly included the software and how it worked. It also included small sections on the study used to develop the software and the results in testing.

Discussion:
During this paper, I somewhat got the impression that they were showing off their software more than they were trying to prove something. I think the software itself was rather interesting, but I don't see much long-term application for it. Technology like this already exists, and personally I can only see this as something to assist artists(which they already have in major corporations and companies). Any use by the average person would need to be mobile, and using both a hand and a pen for input would be virtually impossible to be made mobile. Not only is size a problem (it would be very hard to implement both methods on something the size of an iPad, not to mention a phone), but so is mobility itself. When using mobile devices, most people use one hand to hold it and another to interact with it; this is impossible when required to use both hands for input.