ButterflyNet: A Mobile Capture and Access System for Field Biology Research

 

Ron B. Yeh, Chunyuan Liao, Scott R. Klemmer, François Guimbretière, Brian Lee, Boyko Kakaradov, Jeannie Stamberger, and Andreas Paepcke

 

ronyeh [at] cs.stanford.edu

 

CHI 2006: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

 

Abstract

 

Through a study of field biology practices, we observed that biology fieldwork generates a wealth of heterogeneous information, requiring substantial labor to coordinate and distill. To manage this data, biologists leverage a diverse set of tools, organizing their effort in paper notebooks. These observations motivated ButterflyNet, a mobile capture and access system that integrates paper notes with digital photographs captured during field research. Through ButterflyNet, the activity of leafing through a notebook expands to browsing all associated digital photos. ButterflyNet also facilitates the transfer of captured content to spreadsheets, enabling biologists to share their work. A first-use study with 14 biologists found this system to offer rich data capture and transformation, in a manner felicitous with current practice.

 

 

 

ButterflyNet enables field scientists to capture and structure heterogeneous research data.
 

Paper

Adobe Acrobat PDF (4.4 MB)

 

Project Page

http://hci.stanford.edu/research/biology/
 

Video
WMV (25 MB)