ProjectProposal-BowenLi
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
Contents |
Abstract
At the heart of many important scientific experiments is the age old tradition of taking data. This can involve jotting down floating point numbers, creating complicated sketches of observed phenomena, or make side notes for future reference. For this type of “fast” data input, the lab notebook is quintessential. However, when the experiment ends and it is time to input this data into the computer for analysis, the notebook becomes less attractive and quite a burden.
Problem Description
This type of issue can be troublesome to any student taking a class with an emphasis on the lab portion (eg. college level chemistry) where experiments happen every week, if not more often. These experiments are usually in a controlled environment where specific data sets are asked for and the student is required to list multiple numbers in succession. Then in the same week the student has to copy all these data into a computer and perform some analysis on them (post lab report). Additionally, a carbonless duplicate is provided to the lab TA for verification of completion of the lab. In all, each student has at least 3 copies of his or her data floating around at any given time. The time spent copying data from one source to another detracts from the focus of the lab and the analysis of the data.
Additionally, lab data is often in formats not easily input on the computer, such as sketches, diagrams or math equations. The current practice is to include these figures at the end in handwritten format.
Target User Group
The target user group can be anyone that takes data in a lab-like environment and eventually needs to transcribe this information to computer. In this group are people such as: students in a lab class who need to write lab reports, researchers who take data on their experiments, industry workers taking data on their products. A more specific initial target group would be students at UC Berkeley taking chemistry class with lab. This is a good group to work with because most (if not all) chemistry labs already require a standard lab notebook for chemistry labs. As a Berkeley student I have taken a chemistry class with lab before and I have access to current students in chemistry.
Problem Context and Forces
The heart of the problem lies with the fact that different media are used for different tasks. For taking data in a lab class, the pen and paper are essential.
- Limited space: computer or even a laptop won’t fit in between you and the next person
- Cheap: can spill chemicals on it and it won’t explode or cost you $500
- Fast: can make quick and dirty comments, numbers, graphs
- Less error on digits: easier to hit ‘4’ instead of ‘5’ on keypad than actually writing ‘4’ instead of ‘5’ on a paper
- Accessible: some labs may not have access to computers
However, for analysis the computer completely blows away the pen and paper:
- Software analysis: excel, graphs, trend lines, hard calculations
- Typing: graphs accompanied by typing means computer is cleaner
- Resources: google, scientific websites, etc.
- Share: pool data with group members
In this case using the Anoto pen to bridge the divide makes a lot of sense.
- Technology not likely to take over any time soon (pen won’t take the place of the computer in analysis and vice versa for data jotting)
- Don’t care about pressure sensivity
- Don’t need to erase
- In a specific setting, so ease of use is not lost by fact that you need a “specific” pen to write with
Solution Sketch
The general solution to this problem would be to create a “digital” notebook for the students to use to replace their current lab book. This book would not offer the carbonless copies (since none are required), but instead offer the Anoto system. The book also may make use of software attributes such as handwriting recognition, number recognition, list / bullet recognition, and support any other common elements found in lab books. The data can then be easily input into the correct analysis/presentation program such as providing a standard format to be read by excel for easy calculation or integrating with online molecule models for compound recognition.
By making it fast and easy to use data in digital format, this system will save students a lot of time copying by hand and possibly making input errors on the computer. They will have more time to focus on actually doing the lab report rather than preparing the raw numbers.
