How does the annotation tool influence the performance when proofreading documents? Are physical tools better suited for proofreading tasks? Do annotation methods affect which kind of errors are found?

Any group regularly tasked with proofreading and/or annotating documents (office workers, editors, teachers, students…) could benefit from this research, especially when deciding between physical and digital tools and specific methods of annotating. It could also help developers to recognize strengths or weaknesses of current digital tools, potentially enabling them to improve on them.

The study will compare two different annotation tools, one physical (printed document and a selection of additional utensils) and a suitable web tool. The participants will read different text with different tools. We are planning this as a within-subject design with the annotation tool and text as conditions. For example, participant 1 will first digitally proofread first text A, then physically proofread text B. The Texts should be similar complex and have an equal amount of errors (spelling, punctuation, formatting). We measure how many errors are found with each annotation tool. We are currently considering the option of comparing different methods like highlighting and underlining to compare the tools on their performance with this specific feature. The study would then be between and within subject with the feature as the between condition.

We want to finalize the study design in the first weeks of December, then prepare the technical execution as well as create the texts for the study in the second half of this month. The study will be conducted through January. In February we will process the results and write our paper.