Affordances of Paper and Digital Documents

The use of an object can be described by affordances. Paper, for example, is a medium that offers numerous affordances. Thus, any notes and images can be stored and shared on paper without access protection. The stored information can be irrevocably destroyed. Furthermore, it is possible to wrap other objects in paper. In contrast, digital media offer a number of other advantages. For example, you can search for and in documents. But digital media are not yet able to completely replace paper. In the context of this project, a structured overview is therefore to be created that summarizes the affordances of paper and compares them with those of other media. With this taxonomy it will then be possible to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of paper in specific applications. Based on this taxonomy, the still missing affordances of digital media will be derived in order to completely replace paper-based processes.

Structured comparison of the affordances of paper and comparable digital media:

• Compilation of the affordances of paper and comparable digital media
• Evaluation of the importance of the affordances based on relevant criteria
• Structuring of the affordances to a taxonomy
• Identification of the deficits of digital media compared to paper

Anne Marie Piper and James D. Hollan. 2009. Tabletop displays for small group study: affordances of paper and digital materials. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1227–1236. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518885