For decades, the paperless office seems to be just around the corner. However, even with the advent of laptops, smartphones, and mobile working styles, the reality today is that in most offices paper is still everywhere. Apparently, paper is fulfilling an important role for knowledge workers that digital technology still doesn’t.

In 2002 I was part of a group of researchers at the R&D department of Océ that got inspired by the book The Myth of the Paperless Office by Sellen & Harper. As a result, we started a project to study how paper supports knowledge workers in their task management. Today the project is a Ph.D. project carried out by Olha Bondarenko at the Eindhoven University of Technology, in close cooperation with Samuël Driessen from Océ and myself. Over the years we uncovered many mechanisms by which paper supports knowledge work, and we were able to learn valuable lessons for the design of digital document management systems.

Last Tuesday I was asked to present our research for a group of students at the University of Twente. It was a good reason to summarize six years of “desk research” in a presentation. The presentation is available here.

Tags: document management, knowledge management, paper, personal information management, task management

Dit item is geplaatst door Ruud Janssen op 16 October 2008 om 14:11 in EN, knowledge base, research results. Je kunt een reactie achterlaten, of een trackback op je eigen website opnemen.