Bridging the Gap Between Real Printouts and Digital

In this paper, we describe a paper-based interface, which combines the physical (real) with the digital world: while interacting with real paper printouts, users can seamlessly work with a digital whiteboard at the same time. Users are able to send data from a real paper to the digital world by picking up the content (e.g. images) from real printouts and drop it on the digital surface. The reverse direction for transferring data from the whiteboard to the real paper is supported through printouts of the whiteboard page that are enhanced with integrated Anoto patterns. We present four different interaction techniques that show the potential of this paper and digital world combination. Moreover, we describe the workflow of our system that bridges the gap between the two worlds in detail. Categories and Subject Descriptors H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces – Graphical user interfaces