NotePals: Sharing and Synchronizing Handwritten Notes with Multimedia Documents

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NotePals Sharing and Synchronizing Handwritten
Notes with Multimedia Documents

• Prof. James A. Landay
• January 14, 1999
• BMRC Retreat

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Observation
We often leave meetings without a shared
understanding about what occurred what was
important
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Problem How to Create a Meeting Record?

• Option A Private individual notes
• Drawbacks
• duplicated work
• individuals may miss some points
• miss others perspectives

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Problem How to Create a Meeting Record?

• Option B Appointed scribe records
• Drawbacks
• scribe is overworked cant participate
• notes biased to scribes point of view

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Problem How to Create a Meeting Record?

• Option C Computerized meeting room
• Drawbacks
• expensive
• cant have meetings anywhere, anytime
• computers impede interaction

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Vision
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Shared Note Taking Exploration

• Explored shared meeting notes with a 15 person
  research group
• worked with them for 3 weekly meetings
• Used small paper pads (simulate PDAs)
• Had a volunteer help assemble notes into a shared
  record afterwards
• Surveyed participants on different records
• scribed minutes (their regular method)
• handwritten assembled minutes
• transcribed assembled minutes

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Results of Exploration

• Scribed notes do not contain more information
  than assembled notes
• Users disliked handwritten notes since
• hard to read fast
• hard to search
• -gt use off-line HWR for search/browsing
• Users disliked lack of organization in assembled
  notes
• liked assembled notes combined with scribed notes
  (using minutes for organization)
• -gt use other documents to organize notes

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Crystallized Vision
Take notes on PDAs/CrossPads synchronize after
the meeting with other documents!
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Crystallized Vision
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How NotePals Works
Take free-form ink notes on Pilots or CrossPads
Meet in any environment
Pilots are becoming ubiquitous
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How NotePals Works
Take free-form ink notes on Pilots or CrossPads
Meet in any environment
Pilots are becoming ubiquitous
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How NotePals Works (cont.)
Dock Pilot/CrossPad with PCs Synchronize
Browse notes on the Web
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NotePals User Interface

• Problem Graffiti/HWR
• Notes are free-form ink
• Dont have to think about HWR
• Single screen chunks w/o scrolling

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NotePals User Interface

• Problem Graffiti/HWR
• Notes are free-form ink
• Dont have to think about HWR
• Single screen chunks w/o scrolling

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Web-based Note Repository

• Problem How to Share Use Notes
• Merge all notes on web
• Sort/Filter notes by
• project
• creator
• date
• stationery type
• keyword

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Web-based Note Repository (cont.)

• Issue reading others HW
• View notes at full size
• Off-line HWR
• keyword search
• text for skimming

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Web-based Note Repository (cont.)

• Issue Follow-up
• Respond online

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Web-based Note Repository (cont.)

• Issue organization
• Use other media to organize (conference papers)

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Web-based Note Repository (cont.)

• Issue organization
• Use other media to organize (presentation slides)

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NotePals for Classroom Note Taking

• Students always want slides in advance
• often not practical or advisable
• NotePals solution
• synchronize notes w/ presentation (slides or A/v)
• students can browse their own notes w/ slides
• students can share notes cooperate

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Classroom Note Taking

• Issue organization
• Use other media to organize (lecture slides)

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Classroom Note Taking Experience

• Decided to try with CS160 during Fall 98
• course on UI design, prototyping, evaluation
• All 50 students were given IBM WorkPads for the
  semester
• all course projects also used these devices
• Expected success
• NotePals successfully used by our group for 1
  year
• over 3000 pages of notes in our repository
• successfully used by 3 students in grad OS course
• at start of semester 89 of students said they
  took notes in class (72 shared)

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Results of this Experiment

• After 4 weeks of the course
• only 48 reported taking notes
• all said because slides were online complete
• Of those still taking notes
• only 33 using NotePals, others reported
• screen too small
• application too slow
• paper more natural
• UI hard to learn

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Solutions Future Directions

• Adopt NotePals II or TeamNotes UI
• both eliminate gesture for moving cursor
• use time/space to automatically shrink text _at_
  cursor

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Solutions Future Directions

• NotePals II or TeamNotes UI
• both eliminate gesture for moving cursor
• Create a better slide/note browser
• early prototype was just that

• CrossPad client
• more natural for note taking
• lots of success since prototype came up in Nov.
• has resulted in many more notes in the repository
• would like to obtain pads for an entire class
• Re-run the experiment in a class that is less
  dependent on detailed lecture slides

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Advantages of our Approach

• Lightweight infrastructure
• no expensive hardware or special rooms
• Lightweight process
• supports any style of meeting
• Lightweight interface
• free-form ink lets users focus on meeting
• Lightweight sharing
• share load of record keeping
• not limited to a single perspective

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Current Work

• Better web organization filtering
• improving HWR exploring other org. schemes
• More user testing feedback
• how does sharing change note taking?
• New platforms
• Improving CrossPad, Clio, Palm-size PC, etc.
• Synchronization w/ presentation audio/video
• May be most useful in non-meeting domains
• small group notes
• conference notes presentation slides

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Sharing notes with NotePals can help groups
collaborate more easily