DIZI: A Digital Ink Zooming Interface for Document Annotation

Abstract

Pen computing devices provide a natural interface for annotating documents with freeform digital ink. However, digital ink annotations are usually larger and sloppier than real ink annotations on paper. We present DIZI, a focus+context interface that zooms up a region of the underlying document for inking. Users write in the zoomed region at a comfortable size for the device. When the zoom region is shrunk back to normal page size, the digital ink shrinks to an appropriate size for the underlying document. The zoom region covers only a small portion of the screen so that users can always see the overall context of the underlying document. We describe several techniques for fluidly moving the zoom region to navigate the document. We show that DIZI allows users to create digital ink annotations that more closely mimic the look of real ink annotations on physical paper.

TextTearing

“…We believe this effect illustrates that directly writing in naturally occurring space is not necessarily desirable even though it can be done quickly. This interpretation is in line with Agrawala and Shilman's observations about the difficulties of writing on electronic documents [1]. Additional studies are needed to determine how our expansion-based techniques compare to a zooming scheme like DIZI.…”

“…In future work, we hope to see TextTearing used as part of a deployable document viewer to observe its effectiveness for a full range of real-world practices against methods such as DIZI [1] or sticky notes. Furthermore, studying the impact of TextTearing on annotation consumption tasks such as reading, searching, maintaining, and sharing would complement the research presented in this paper.…”

“…Agrawala and Shilman [1] explained that differing physical characteristics between electronic displays and paper means that digital ink annotations are often larger and sloppier. As a result, what whitespace is available is more impacted.…”

“…Support for annotation is less robust when it comes to digital documents. Although many software tools support free-form inking with touchscreens or pen digitizers, writing on electronic screens tends to place more demand on the available annotation space [1]. However, the dynamic nature of digital documents provides an avenue for workarounds.…”

InkAnchor

“…The first issue is interaction space. In contrast to pens and tablets, which prior work focused on [1,12,28], the small form factor of mobile phones and the occlusion caused by finger-based touch input provide a limited effective space for interaction. Touch-based input also has low precision because of the large contact area of the finger on a touchscreen (the "fat finger" problem [5]).…”