Title: NotePals: Sharing and Synchronizing Handwritten Notes with Multimedia Documents
1NotePals Sharing and Synchronizing Handwritten
Notes with Multimedia Documents
- Prof. James A. Landay
- January 14, 1999
- BMRC Retreat
2Observation
We often leave meetings without a shared
understanding about what occurred what was
important
3Problem How to Create a Meeting Record?
- Option A Private individual notes
- Drawbacks
- duplicated work
- individuals may miss some points
- miss others perspectives
4Problem How to Create a Meeting Record?
- Option B Appointed scribe records
- Drawbacks
- scribe is overworked cant participate
- notes biased to scribes point of view
5Problem How to Create a Meeting Record?
- Option C Computerized meeting room
- Drawbacks
- expensive
- cant have meetings anywhere, anytime
- computers impede interaction
6Vision
7Shared 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
8Results 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
9Crystallized Vision
Take notes on PDAs/CrossPads synchronize after
the meeting with other documents!
10Crystallized Vision
11How NotePals Works
Take free-form ink notes on Pilots or CrossPads
Meet in any environment
Pilots are becoming ubiquitous
12How NotePals Works
Take free-form ink notes on Pilots or CrossPads
Meet in any environment
Pilots are becoming ubiquitous
13How NotePals Works (cont.)
Dock Pilot/CrossPad with PCs Synchronize
Browse notes on the Web
14NotePals User Interface
- Problem Graffiti/HWR
- Notes are free-form ink
- Dont have to think about HWR
- Single screen chunks w/o scrolling
15NotePals User Interface
- Problem Graffiti/HWR
- Notes are free-form ink
- Dont have to think about HWR
- Single screen chunks w/o scrolling
16Web-based Note Repository
- Problem How to Share Use Notes
- Merge all notes on web
- Sort/Filter notes by
- project
- creator
- date
- stationery type
- keyword
17Web-based Note Repository (cont.)
- Issue reading others HW
- View notes at full size
- Off-line HWR
- keyword search
- text for skimming
18Web-based Note Repository (cont.)
- Issue Follow-up
- Respond online
19Web-based Note Repository (cont.)
- Issue organization
- Use other media to organize (conference papers)
20Web-based Note Repository (cont.)
- Issue organization
- Use other media to organize (presentation slides)
21NotePals 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
22Classroom Note Taking
- Issue organization
- Use other media to organize (lecture slides)
23Classroom 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)
24Results 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
25Solutions Future Directions
- Adopt NotePals II or TeamNotes UI
- both eliminate gesture for moving cursor
- use time/space to automatically shrink text _at_
cursor
26Solutions 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
27Advantages 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
28Current 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
29Sharing notes with NotePals can help groups
collaborate more easily