The Reading Desk: Applying Physical Interactions to Digital Documents

Abstract

Reading is increasingly being performed interactively on-screen; for instance, new novels are now routinely released in electronic format for viewing on PCs and mobile devices. Unfortunately, on-screen reading loses many of the natural features of conventional physical media, such as the ability to annotate, slip in bookmarks, turn page corners, and so on. How best should these features be represented electronically? Can computerized representations give benefits that excel the conventional benefits of paper? We describe the design and implementation of a novel reading system that mimics key properties of paper and surpasses them by incorporating digital techniques. A comparative user study ..