Jess ChampionWeb Product Engineer
- Year
- 2011
- Organisation
- University of Waikato
Honors project
- Honors dissertation project
Roles
Technologies
The goal of my project was to create a tool for collaborative distributed planning on software development projects. The system I created utilised Anoto digital pens; to support and enhance the tried and tested agile planning technique of using stories and index cards.
Anoto pens:
The Anoto pen looks and feels like a traditional ball point pen but, it is amalgamated with a digital camera, an advanced image microprocessor, and a Bluetooth transmitter. When a user writes on paper augmented with the Anoto dot pattern the camera in the pen reads these dots, and uses the pattern to uniquely identify the pens exact location. The location of the pen is streamed via Bluetooth so that computer software can receive the information and process it to create a digital copy of the markings on the Anoto paper.
Below are images of the Anoto dot pattern. On the left is the pattern with no magnification and on the right magnified 1000 times.
The tool
The system I developed utilised Anoto digital pens to create a tool that would keep a digital replica of a physical agile board.
User writes on an Anoto paper card with the Anoto pen:
The physical card is replicated in the system:The annotated user attaching the card to the wall by drawing a line across the corner:This means that an exact replication of the physical board can be maintained by the system:
There is also a deck view which allows the user to flip through all the cards entered into the system, check the text recognition results and view the history of the cards position on the board:
