Augmenting reality: adding computational dimensions to paper

About the Author: PIERRE WELLNER is a final-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge Computer Lab and a research scientist at Rank Xerox EuroPARC. Current research interests include human-computer interaction, computer-augmented environments , and novel input/output devices. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is give that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission. II Acknowledgments On February 24, 1993, we held a small workshop on "Aug-mented Reality and Ubiquitous Computing" at MIT. Many of the authors in this issue participated, as well as other researchers who have done substantial work in the field. We discussed issues we had in common and the defining characteristics of this field. These discussions helped shape our thinking, brought together related new ideas from different areas, and confirmed to us the importance of this approach to the future of human-computer interaction. D espite claims about the "pa-perless office," we find that today's technology, rather than replacing paper, has Increased our use of It. We use tiny Post-it notes and large pads of fllpchart paper. We fill In preprinted forms and buy products with barcode labels. We annotate our calendars and telephone directories. We continue to read books, newspapers and memos. Chances are that you are reading these words on paper. Since we are committed to using paper, how can we best augment It? Computers provide a number of possible dimensions, such as computational, semantic , syntactic, graphic, and temporal. ThuS, columns Of numbers become amenable to "whatdf" speculations on an electronic spreadsheet; or they can appear as dynamic weather patterns or rotating molecular models when fed Into a scientific visualization program. Words on a page can be translated into French, checked for spelling or analyzed for writing style, l~vo-dlmenslonal hand-drawn sketches can be edited, replicated or made more precise; or they can be rendered Into 3D and rotated or projected onto other objects. A paper cartoon can be animated, or a still Image can become a movie. We are using the DlgltalDesk (see the accompanying article "Interacting with Paper on the DlgltalDesk') to explore these dimensions. Figure A Shows the Digital Drawing Board, …