Scraps: Enabling Mobile Capture, Contextualization, and Use of Document Resources

People often capture photos or notes from their phones to integrate
later into a document. But current mobile capture tools can make
this hard, with the captured information ending up fragmented and
decontextualized. This paper explores how to help document authors
capture, contextualize, and use document-related information. A
survey of 66 information workers reveals that document-focused
information capture differs from other types of mobile information
capture, and that while people capture a broad range of information
types while mobile, most document-related capture comes in the
form of photos, notes, and bookmarks. Based on this survey we built
Scraps, which consists of two parts: 1) a mobile app that makes
it easy for people to capture and add context to information from
their phone, and 2) a Word sidebar that helps them later link that
information to a document on their desktop. In a field study with 11
information workers, we find that Scraps streamlined the process
of capturing and using document-related information, and enabled
people to focus on writing over integrating captured information.