Paper for E-Paper: Towards Paper Like

Tangible Experience using E-Paper

Gavin Bailey Abstract

Swansea University Our work presents a method to use paper as an input
SA2 8PP, UK device while reading on a mobile device, where the user
711036@swansea.ac.uk
turns a physical page in the real world in order to turn a
page in the digital world. Our goal in this work is to replicate
the feedback and affordances one would receive from a
Deepak Sahoo printed book on a mobile device, where to fully replicate the
Swansea University reading experience the user would need to turn pages as
SA2 8PP, UK they would naturally with a printed book. Through a small
d.r.sahoo@swansea.ac.uk
study we discovered a number of ways that pages are often
turned and these techniques became vital to the project.
We describe a prototype device which uses paper as an
Matt Jones input device with transparent electrodes and bend sensors
Swansea University embedded to pages, so that the turning and bending of
SA2 8PP, UK pages can be digitally detected and addressed. The
matt.jones@swansea.ac.uk
prototype is able to detect the page turns and bends made
by the user and the state of each page.

Author Keywords
e-book; interface; interactive paper; interaction; prototype;
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or mobile device;
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed
for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation
on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. ACM Classification Keywords
For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Haptic I/O; Input devices and
ISS ’17, October 17-20, 2017, Brighton, United Kingdom.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-4691-7/17/10. strategies; Prototyping
https://doi.org/10.1145/3132272.3132298

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b
c
a
Figure 1. Page turning techniques
discovered by observing
colleagues (a) Flicking technique
(b) Arching technique (c) Edge
Picking technique
Introduction
Recently, electronic media has become the preferred mode
of communication. Electronic readers (e-readers) are
commonly used to access the information anywhere,
anytime. When released the Kindle was instantly popular
and it uses an e-paper display which looks like usual paper
and ink. However, these displays fail to offer the tactile
experience received from a piece of paper which is a
challenge to make a true e-paper.
The lack of tactile feedback from a touch screen has been
referred to as "Pictures Under Glass"[10], where no matter
the task, the tactile experience remains the same. A study
was carried out in 2014 by Mangen et al.[6], which looked
at the narrative engagement of readers on paper vs a
tablet. The study found that the tablet readers were less
likely to report narrative coherence, which may have been
caused by the difference in tactile experiences.
We propose a method that turns paper pages on a mobile
device, by combining paper with transparent electrodes so
that individual pages can be addressed. We built a
prototype using paper with embedded electrodes and bend
sensors to identify tangible interactions with the paper and
a smart-phone, such as the turning of a page.
Related Work
Appearance of E-Pages as Real Paper
Since the advent of world wide web, affordable mobile
communication and smartphones, electronic text has
skyrocketed over written text. Early research related to our
work focused on giving electronic media the realistic visual
appearance of physical media. For example, "How To Turn
The Page"[2], "Realistic Books"[3] and the British Library’s
"Turning The Pages"[5] have explored on realistic
appearance of digital books. All of the projects developed a
graphical user interface(GUI) to display digital books in a
realistic way. The projects realistically model the turning of
pages, with the Realistic Books project going even further
by showing ageing effects based on the number of times
the book has been read.
The average book has more than one page visible at a
time, mobile devices can do this in the landscape
orientation, but this in no way resembles a real book as the
display is flat. FlexCase[8] is a flip cover for a mobile
device. The project introduces the idea of adding a second
screen to a device using an e-ink display. The e-ink display
allows extra content to be displayed without using a great
deal of power. FlexCase incorporates sensors to identify
multiple forms of interaction, such as the touching and
bending of the display.
E-Pages on Real Paper
No display technologies currently available would be able to
completely mimic the properties of a printed page
of a book. Olberding et al.[7] introduce a method to
print displays onto paper. PrintScreen creates
Electroluminescent displays onto thin materials such as
paper or plastics. The proposed method allows a matrix
display to be printed onto a regular piece of office paper,
which can be used to display an image or text. The pixel
density is far below that of e-ink displays, resulting in the
display not being be as sharp.
Tajika et al.[9] explored interactions possibilities of flexible
e-pages and compared with that using real paper pages. As
a flexible display was not available, they used a LCD screen
and a single plastic sheet which had inbuilt bend sensors to
interact with the e-reader.
In all related work to the best of our knowledge, an ordinary
paper based interface that can be incorporated into an
447
 e-reader for a product that provides the realistic tactile
experience of reading printed pages while allowing digital
functionalities of the paper and for for exploring interaction
and user experience(UX) with e-paper is not presented.
Page Turning Observation
We observed a group of colleagues(6 males and 2 females,
age 22-25) turning pages of a book. We asked them to flick
through pages of a book as if they were reading it by
themselves. From our observations we discovered that
a
there were a number of distinct styles our colleagues turned
the pages as shown in Figure 1.
b
(a) Flicking is when one edge is bent back to create and
arc, while the thumb releases the top page, causing it
c
to "flick" to the other side of the book.
(b) Arching is when the page is arched in someway, so
d causing the resistance to be decreased allowing us to
that the reader is able to create enough space for them
to fit a finger underneath, allowing them to get to the
next page.
Figure 2. Prototype showing
(c) Edge picking is when the reader picks up the page by
navigation (a) Single page
using the tip of a finger on the page edge. This is done
turn(next/previous page) (b)
at either the top or bottom corners as it is easier to pick
Double page turn(next/previous
page) (c) Triple page turn(scroll) (d) due the increased flexibility in these areas.
Top page bend(peek). Navigation
is mirrored
Our study found some similar results to that of Lee et al.[4]
and Tajika et al.[9]. Even though the results where
somewhat similar, our study was aimed directly aimed at
how a user interacts with a book. The study by Lee et al.
was about how users in interacted with flexible displays,
while ours was more directed to our area of study. Tajika et
al. gave each of their participants tasks to perform
throughout the study, where as our colleagues were given
no instruction, making our results more natural.
Our belief is that if these categories of interactions are
replicated on a mobile device with an input interface using
paper or paper-like materials, then the action of turning a
page will be comparable to that of a printed book.
Prototype
We have built a prototype device (Figure 3) using an
Arduino[1]. At both sides of the device there is a set of 3
pages, where each page has a electrode strip embedded.
Figure 3 shows the electrodes and the bend sensor
embedded onto the page.The electrodes are used to record
the state of each page. The top pages of each side also
have a very thin bend sensor to detect the shape of the
page.
We made a thin bend sensor using Velostat, conductive
thread and adhesive film, as shown in Figure 4. When the
page is bent, the pressure on the Velostat is increased,
measure the bend of the page.
We developed an e-reader application which, when data is
received the page is turned or peeked dependent on the
actions listed below. The prototype allows four interactions
per side, shown in Figure 2.
(a) Single page turn: When only the top page of either
side is turned. Changes the page to its neighbour.
(b) Double page turn: When the top two pages of either
side are turned. Increments or decrements the current
chapter by one, again depending on the side of
interaction.
(c) Triple page turn: When all three pages of either side
are turned. This scrolls through the pages of a book,
again direction is dependant on the side of interaction.
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a flat position the next page is covered.
c allowing the correct data to be sent to the mobile device
b
Figure 3. Prototype showing (a)
Arduino Setup (b) Transparent
Electrodes (c) Bend Sensor(show
in Figure 4)
b 281–290.
a books. The book is a tried and tested medium for reading
Figure 4. Diagram of thin bend
sensor made using layers of: (a)
Conductive Thread, 2 layers on the
outside of the Velostat. (b)
Velostat, 2 layers back to back,
in-between layers of conductive
thread. All layers are encased
between a clear adhesive film
(d) Top page bend: When the top page of either side
is bent (where the top corner is lifted causing a curve
along the page), the reader is able to peek at the next.
As more bend is put into the page, more of the next
page is revealed. When the page is placed back into a
Each interaction or "page turn" is detected when the circuit
between the transparent electrodes is broken, allowing us
to address what page or pages have been turned, thus
and replicating the users physical actions within the digital
world.
Conclusion
The subject of e-reading has been included in many
research papers, but most offer solutions that are complex,
expensive and in no way offer the affordances and feedback
of paper. Our solution brings the experience of reading a
printed book to e-book readers, by adding real paper
pages, which users physically turn to interact with digital
and has been for over a thousand years. Our solution pays
homage to the predecessor of e-readers by keeping their
physical properties and merging them with the digital
world.
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