Paperizer is 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.

Paper-Based Interaction

We developed four different interaction techniques that show the potential of this paper and digital world combination: Pick-and-Drop, Sketch-and-Send, Present-and-Interact and a Remote Control.

With Pick-and-Drop, users can pick up data from a printed document and drop it on the interactive surface, the digital whiteboard. This can be either images that are contained in the page or custom defined areas that are selected with a lasso tool.

Through Sketch-and-Send, our system supports additional annotations on the real printout that can be performed with the real ink of the pen. The digital version of the ink can be either visualized in real-time on the digital whiteboard or stored on the pen’s integrated memory and then sent in one step to the whiteboard. In both variations, all data that is entered with the pen while in inking mode is processed in one or the other way.

Present-and-Interact allows the notes that are sent to the whiteboard to be further modified with digital ink. In addition, transferred images can be arranged and transformed on the digital surface.

The Remote Control is a real printout of interface elements like buttons on the bottom of each page. It allows to interact with the whiteboard from the paper printouts (e.g. adding a new page, changing the ink color of the digital flipchart etc.).