Skip to main content

Inking Outside the Box: How Context Sensing Affords More Natural Pen (and Touch) Computing

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Revolutionizing Education with Digital Ink

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

The authors were invited to present a reprise of a recently-published paper on Sensing Techniques for Tablet \(+\) Stylus Interaction at the WIPTTE 2015 Workshop. The talk took the original contribution as a point of departure, because for the WIPTTE venue we felt that the most important role of the work was to illuminate and help the audience understand more deeply the interaction modalities of pen and touch—as well as their use in tandem. And in the process the authors felt like they came to understand the topic more deeply as well, hence the paper that follows.

One of the premises of the talk was that even a concept as seemingly straightforward as ‘touch’—not to mention pen \(+\) touch, used together in complementary roles—is perhaps not as well understood as we might think it is.

In particular, we argue that beyond the standard idiom of touch (and multi-touch) interaction on touchscreens, there are many aspects of ‘touch’ that are rarely considered (much less actually sensed) by existing devices and interaction designs. We show how this surrounding context of manual activity—how the user is holding the tablet, how the user is gripping the pen, and how each device is oriented and moving relative to the other—have the potential to considerably enrich interaction with tablets, and thereby to re-define what we conceive of as ‘natural’ interaction with pen and touch.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Brandl P, Forlines C, Wigdor D, Haller M, Shen C (2008) Combining and measuring the benefits of bimanual pen and direct-touch interaction on horizontal interfaces. In: Proceedings of the working conference on advanced visual interfaces, AVI ’08. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 154–161

    Google Scholar 

  2. Buxton W (1995) Integrating the periphery and context: a new taxonomy of telematics. In: Proceedings of graphics interface, vol 95. Citeseer, pp 239–246

    Google Scholar 

  3. Chen N, Guimbretiere F, Sellen A (2012) Designing a multi-slate reading environment to support active reading activities. ACM Trans Comput-Hum Interact 19(3):18:1–18:35

    Google Scholar 

  4. Guiard Y (1987) Asymmetric division of labor in human skilled bimanual action: the kinematic chain as a model. J Mot Behav 19(4):486–517

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Hamilton P, Wigdor DJ (2014) Conductor: enabling and understanding cross-device interaction. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’14. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 2773–2782

    Google Scholar 

  6. Hamilton W, Kerne A, Robbins T (2012) High-performance pen \(+\) touch modality interactions: a real-time strategy game esports context. In: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, UIST ’12. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 309–318

    Google Scholar 

  7. Hinckley K (1996) Haptic issues for virtual manipulation. PhD thesis, University of Virginia

    Google Scholar 

  8. Hinckley K, Horvitz E (2001) Toward more sensitive mobile phones. In: Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, UIST ’01. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 191–192

    Google Scholar 

  9. Hinckley K, Pierce J, Sinclair M, Horvitz E (2000) Sensing techniques for mobile interaction. In: Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, UIST ’00. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 91–100

    Google Scholar 

  10. Hinckley K, Pahud M, Buxton B (2010) Direct display interaction via simultaneous pen \(+\) multi-touch input. In: SID symposium digest of technical papers, vol 41:1. Wiley Online Library, pp 537–540

    Google Scholar 

  11. Hinckley K, Yatani K, Pahud M, Coddington N, Rodenhouse J, Wilson A, Benko H, Buxton B (2010) Pen \(+\) touch \(=\) new tools. In: Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, UIST ’10. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 27–36

    Google Scholar 

  12. Hinckley K, Bi X, Pahud M, Buxton B (2012) Informal information gathering techniques for active reading. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’12. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 1893–1896

    Google Scholar 

  13. Hinckley K, Chen XA, Benko H (2013) Motion and context sensing techniques for pen computing. In: Proceedings of graphics Interface 2013, GI ’13. Canadian Information Processing Society, Toronto, Ont., Canada, pp 71–78

    Google Scholar 

  14. Hinckley K, Pahud M, Benko H, Irani P, Guimbretière F, Gavriliu M, Chen XA, Matulic F, Buxton W, Wilson A (2014) Sensing techniques for tablet\(+\)stylus interaction. In: Proceedings of the 27th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, UIST ’14. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 605–614

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hong M, Piper AM, Weibel N, Olberding S, Hollan J (2012) Microanalysis of active reading behavior to inform design of interactive desktop workspaces. In: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM international conference on interactive tabletops and surfaces, ITS ’12. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 215–224

    Google Scholar 

  16. Marquardt N, Hinckley K, Greenberg S (2012) Cross-device interaction via micro-mobility and f-formations. In: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, UIST ’12. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 13–22

    Google Scholar 

  17. Morris MR, Meyers BR et al (2007) Reading revisited: evaluating the usability of digital display surfaces for active reading tasks. In: Second annual IEEE international workshop on horizontal interactive human-computer systems, TABLETOP ’07. IEEE, pp 79–86

    Google Scholar 

  18. Schilit BN, Golovchinsky G, Price MN (1998) Beyond paper: supporting active reading with free form digital ink annotations. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’98. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, New York, NY, USA, pp 249–256

    Google Scholar 

  19. Sellen AJ, Harper RH (2002) The myth of the paperless office. MIT press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  20. Tashman CS, Edwards WK (2011) Active reading and its discontents: the situations, problems and ideas of readers. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’11. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 2927–2936

    Google Scholar 

  21. Yoon D, Hinckley K, Benko H, Guimbretire FV, Irani PP, Pahud M, Gavriliu M (2015) Sensing tablet grasp \(+\) micro-mobility for active reading. In: Proceedings of the 28th ACM user interface software and technology symposium, UIST. ACM, New York, NY, USA (Accepted)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Zeleznik R, Bragdon A, Adeputra F, Ko HS (2010) Hands-on math: a page-based multi-touch and pen desktop for technical work and problem solving. In: Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on user interface software and technology, UIST ’10. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 17–26

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The work underlying this paper is the result of many years of study and prototyping by a large number of people. In particular we would like to acknowledge the efforts of Michel Pahud, Hrvoje Benko, Pourang Irani, Marcel Gavriliu, Francois Guimbretiere, Xiang ‘Anthony’ Chen, Fabrice Matulic, and Andy Wilson on our Stylus \(+\) Tablet Sensing Techniques paper [14] which prompted our invited presentation at WIPTTE (and hence, the present manuscript).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ken Hinckley .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Hinckley, K., Buxton, B. (2016). Inking Outside the Box: How Context Sensing Affords More Natural Pen (and Touch) Computing. In: Hammond, T., Valentine, S., Adler, A. (eds) Revolutionizing Education with Digital Ink. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31193-7_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31193-7_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31191-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31193-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics