“Physical Hypermedia”: Organizing Collections of Mixed Physical and Digital Material

1. “Physical Hypermedia”: Organizing Collections of Mixed Physical and Digital Material

2. Abstract: • This paper addresses the problem of organizing material in mixed digital and physical environments. • Radio Frequency Identifier allows users tag physical material and have these tracked by antennas. • Three categories of tags: simple object tags, collection tags, tooltags. • The primary application domain is architecture and design.

3. Introduction: Physical Hypermedia – make objects from physical world into first class objects in hypermedia systems. • Ubiquitous and pervasive computing • Augmented reality • Hypermedia and spatial relationships

4. Introduction cont. • Topos is the infrastructure they use for the prototype presented in this paper. • The central concept in Topos is the workspace.

5. The challenge of bridging between physical and digital material • Challenge: physical material such as paper, clips, often relate to digital material in terms of directories and documents of different types. However, today there is very little support for maintaining this relationship. • Approach: integrate RFID tagging system with Topos to support for creating, manipulating, and maintaining this relationship in an interactive environment.

6. Empirical studies: The studies form the foundation for discussing and describing the organization and management of material in a specific work setting of landscape architects. The studies show: • Landscape architects take different approaches for organizing material depending on the degree of formalization of procedures in terms of work context. • Physical space is not just used for organizing with the purpose of re-finding material; it is also used as an exhibition of ongoing work, as well as the creation of an inspirational and creative atmosphere.

7. Empirical studies cont. • The main purposes of organizing physical object is documentation, inspiration, management.

8. Empirical studies cont. • The use ofMeta-data and annotation is to be able to re-find and recognize material for later use and to place it in relevant contexts.

9. Empirical studies cont. • In order to create an environment for organizing and managing mixtures of physical and digital material, describing, understanding, and analyzing collectional artifacts in relation to the collectional actions performed in the studied work contexts is necessary.

10. Relationships between physical and digital world: 5 Types of material: • Physical only • Physical with digital ID • Physical with low resolution digital representation • Physical generated from digital • Digital only

11. Working with physical hypermedia prototypes: Tagging – registering material and detecting collectional actions • Use of RFID to register physical material and generate a digital ID in Topos. • Associate a tag with a Topos object according to the ID. • If object tags have been removed, the linked digital counterparts are marked by a red upper left corner. • RFID readers: a large one capable of recognizing several tags at once, a hand-held one that only read a single tag at a time.

12. Working with physical hypermedia prototypes cont.

13. Working with physical hypermedia prototypes cont. Representing physical material – snapscanning • Because design is a circular behavior, a snapshot of a sketch in Topos makes the use of tags much more efficient and flexible.

14. Working with physical hypermedia prototypes cont. Tooltags are able to link and group physical objects and their digital counterparts. • A tooltag is coupled to a command in Topos rather than to a piece of information.