Kimiyoshi Machii

Retrieving electronic documents with real-world objects on InteractiveDESK

We are developing a computerized desk which we have named InteractiveDESK [1]. One of the major features of the InteractiveDESK is reality awareness; that is, the ability to respond to situational changes in the real world in order to reduce users’ workloads. In this paper, we present a new method, as an example of the reality awareness, to retrieve electronic documents with real objects such as paper documents or folders. Users of the InteractiveDESK can retrieve electronic documents by just showing real objects which have links to the electronic documents. The links are made by the users through interactions with the InteractiveDESK. The advantage of this method is that the user can unify the arrangement of electronic documents into the arrangement of real objects.

InteractiveDESK: a computer-augmented desk which responds to operations on real objects

Office and engineering workers’ workloads are reduced with a computer-augmented desk named InteractiveDESK. The desk has a large desktop display with a pen-input facility and an ordinary upright display with a keyboard, thus integrating features of conventional systems and pen-based systems. The desk detects the operations on real objects on its real desk top, and responds to the operations to reduce users’ workloads. The prototype of the desk assists users in switching input methods and retrieving electronic files.