Observing professionals taking notes on screen

In this study 38 participants wrote a piece of advice based on reading and annotating information from an extensive Web site. Half of the participants took notes in a separate window, the other half used an advanced annotation tool. In text annotations were far more used than separate notes. The frequency with which features of the note-taking tool notes was used depends on the phase in the process. The association between process phase and the use of features is less clear for the annotation tool. Requirements are formulated for the design of annotation tools.