In the science fiction film 'Minority Report', a homicide detective, played by Tom Cruise, conducts with his arms in front of a huge transparent screen in order to bring up documents or to remove them, to zoom in and compare details. The present generation of user interfaces falls hopelessly short of realizing this physical handling of documents. It may well be one reason why people still use so much paper beside their PCs and PDAs. In her doctoral research within the User System Interaction group (USI) Olha Bodarenko investigates how and why people still use paper in their work. This research springs from her final assignment for OCÉ, which she conducted for her two-year postdoctoral training as a User System Engineer.

Olha: "The question for the final assignment was: how can we better support people in a digital environment by deploying the benefits of the use of paper?" This question she investigated and she used her results to make a system design. "This system has been patented with OCÉ. "Even then it was clear that we had to dig into this problem more deeply to gain more insight. It is clear that people use paper, for instance, because it is easy to handle or because you can read well from paper, but there is more than that."

Physical
Olha examined the physical working environment of people in particular. "This environment, the desk and the documents on it give someone a lot of information. By shifting a document from one stack to another, you are saying to yourself: 'Now I have finished.' Or the handwriting of that one post-it on your desk tells you that this is about something you still need to do. You do not reflect on that. It is simply how it works."

One thing that Olha did for her research was to interview people. "However, the possibilities of an open interview are limited", says Olha. "You only hear what people want to tell you. And if you observe people, you see what they do but you do not see why they do it. In the end I came across the interviewing technique of Kelly, from 1955, called 'Repertory grid', and I had people compare three different photos of their desks. Which photos are comparable and which one is different and why? This exercise yields interesting information. Thus, people also concretize their less conscious ideas about the organization of their desks." Olha utilizes the results of this research to draw up guidelines for designers of digital document management systems.

Atmosphere
Apart from her research, Olha is active as chairwoman of the alumni association of User System Interaction, USInet. It is a good way of maintaining contacts, explains Olha. "Every two months we organize a meeting or a lecture. We have a very active and international group of people", Olha says. "I really like that international atmosphere. I am originally from the Ukraine and you hardly come across any foreigners there. It was a relief to be within such an international company here, to get acquainted with different cultures and to make new contacts. A drawback is that it is more difficult to learn Dutch. People have no trouble speaking English to you, even the Dutch. So you really have to make an effort on that account. In an environment in which Dutch is the only language spoken, my Dutch will probably improve a bit. Here at the TU/e I cannot manage that."/.