Autopoetic

Old-fangled technology

Years ago, some time before the dot com crash, I went to a western saddle & tack conference in Denver to sell a web-based catalog service. Why we thought it was a brilliant idea to sell web services to a bunch of farmers… well, that’s another story.

Anyway, around the second day a man—he ran a feed store, and looked to be in his sixties—got up the courage to visit our booth. He’d circled a few times, so I knew he was interested, but perhaps afraid of the “new-fangled” technology that we were demoing with.

After delivering my pitch, I invited him to pick up the mouse and try it out.

“Here, just point and click,” I said.

He picked up the mouse and—to my utter surprise—held it in front of the screen. Of course, what happened when he clicked the button wasn’t at all what he was expecting.

At the time, I couldn’t believe how lacking he was in basic computer literacy. After all, I lived in a world where mice were common things to have lying about the house. It’s taken me years of paying attention to user interface design to realize that what he did was not something to laugh at—it was exactly the right thing to do.

People shouldn’t adapt to computers. Computers should adapt to people. It is this reason that slate computers have a better form factor for general computing. It’s not “new fangled”, it’s “old fangled”.

In the last few days I’ve gathered some anecdotal evidence to support this statement. What’s the best way to find out if something is intuitively usable? That’s right, give it to someone who’s never used it before.

If you’ve read my last post, you know that I’ve been waiting for a Motion LE1600 slate computer to arrive. Well, it’s finally here, a week late. Over this Thanksgiving holiday, I tested my hypothesis.

Anecdotal evidence #1: From the Mouths of Babes

If you pay close attention, you can hear Maychelle ask: “can you touch the marker?” I think she wanted to smudge it with her finger. I had to tell her no, but I kept thinking to myself that I should be able to answer “yes”.

Think about it: all you’d need is an adaptive multi-touch sensor. In this case, you’d also have to pester Autodesk to upgrade SketchBook Pro.

Total training time: 30 seconds.

Anecdotal evidence #2: Comfy Patriarch

This is a photograph of my father reading the New York Times using their new reader software. I think he actually growled when I wrestled it away from him.

Total training time: None. I just handed it to him.

Anecdotal evidence #3: Mischievous Canine

Pomeranians are well known to be intelligent dogs, so I thought, why not?

She wasn’t able to manipulate the software on the tablet, most likely due to a lack of opposable thumbs to grip the stylus. Because this alone is not indicative of a failure to interact with the slate form factor (just the stylus), I have included it here.

I will likely repeat the experiment when the aforementioned adaptive multi-touch sensor becomes widely available.

Total training time: about 2 months. She can now sit and sorta lay down, but good luck trying to make her roll over.

Of course, I’m cheating a bit here. The software used by my experiment’s human contingent were designed with slate computers in mind (and thus are wonderful examples of how pen-based software should work). Other software, including Windows XP and Outlook 2003, are nowhere near as slate friendly. However I am reservedly hopeful that this situation will improve.

Perhaps one day I’ll be able to remember the incident at the saddle & tack conference in the same way my boss remembers her “rat tail” cell phone being too big for her pocket: as a possibility thankfully buried in the past.

I’ve now been using Windows XP Tablet Edition long enough to form some useful opinions. Next time, I’ll go over why I think Microsoft is going in the wrong direction with their TIP interface, and discuss the tools I have discovered so far to increase productivity with a slate computer.

The stylus is mightier than the keyboard

In my work, I seldom use paper anymore, and writing with a pen has become something of a curiosity. These day I type everything: documents, notes, stickies. Typing is faster, accurate, and immensely more readable than my handwriting. If it was possible, I’d probably be tempted to type my signature too. But typing lacks a certain satisfaction that I can’t seem to put my finger on.

There's something pleasing and comforting about the act of writing. I’m not talking about the tactile sensation of the pen tip dragging across paper, although I enjoy that too. I’m talking about the freedom of not being constrained by what the computer “lets” you do.

I can write text with tight, non-nonsense slashes; or with loose and lazy loops. I can doodle in the margins. I can label my doodles with other doodles. There's also something altogether charming about the little imperfections in a stroked line in spots where ink fails to make contact with paper.

I was reminded of this freedom several years back when I bought an Apple Newton Messagepad. No, this wasn’t the model with horrible handwriting recognition. This was the MP2000, the one that actually worked. I had a reason write and sketch again, but this time the experience was better.

Not only could I sketch and write freely, but the ink under my stylus was alive. I could move my drawings and scale them. I could interact with text by tapping on the words. I could make them dance across the page. There’s something magical about that.

Since then, I‘ve bought three other Newtons and have used them on and off since they were discontinued. I’ve used Palm devices, WinCE devices, and even the doomed Magic CAP-based DataRover. I always tend to come back to the Newton, even though the industry continues to describe them as “oversized”, and as having been too expensive, neither of which is true.

Lately, I’ve become interested in the question "what, exactly, fascinates me about these devices?"

Does the visceral connection with stroking letter-forms and pictures translate to anything more than pure emotion? I wonder: how are these things important? Do they make you more productive?

I have a theory that these type of devices, which I’ll call “slate PCs”, are the next logical evolution of the user interface. I believe that my experiences with them are more than emotional—that they have a direct impact on how I work. But I’m a pragmatist. I want to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that slate PCs really do impact productivity positively. Otherwise I feel like a sleazy salesman who eventually starts believing his own lies.

My intent for this blog is to be my place to post essays that help me think about subjects that I find important. In that spirit, this blog will become single-mindedly slate PC-related for a while, in an effort to explain to myself why digital ink and touch-screen tablets aren’t just frivolous technologies.

Although the Newton is a great example of what a slate PC could be usability-wise, it was created in the pre-Internet era. To truly understand how slate PCs help or obstruct interaction in the contemporary world, I need one that is capable of interfacing with the networked resources currently available. Today, this means a Tablet PC, specifically of the slate variety.

I think it’s important that this device have no keyboard. I know what using a keyboard is like, and I want to avoid the temptation of using the machine like all my other ones simply because I’m in a rush and don’t want to go through the learning curve. I want to know how I might get something done without a keyboard.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keyboards—they have their uses. But I also think they’re well understood. The goal here is to gain insight on the importance of pen on paper, or rather, stylus on screen.

That said, I’ve ordered a Motion LE1600 slate-style Tablet PC.

Before you follow me on this little adventure, I feel I must forewarn you. I enter into this little experiment with a set of opinions that will inevitably affect my judgement. You should know something about me to properly place my thoughts in the proper context.

I am the CTO of Topia Technology, Inc., a software development company in Tacoma, WA (it’s a hop, skip and a jump away from that “big” Washington town you probably know: Seattle). Most of what I do is what I’ve heard termed “knowledge work”.

Basically, I attend a lot of meetings and think about technology. I read papers, evaluate software architecture, and give demonstrations. Because these meetings are all over the place, I tend to be highly mobile. People have called me a wandering nomad. Sometimes I don’t even have an official place to sit. I do not have, nor want, an office. I’m also on a plane a lot.

The majority of the artifacts in this environment are electronic: presentations, Word documents, email, spreadsheets, etc. Sometimes I need to mark them up, in which case I’ll print them.

Another thing about my work is that my company is a Mac-based shop. I won’t go into why or how, but just be aware we’ve got OS X boxes up the yin-yang.

Myself, I am an avid Mac user—I have one for work and several at home. I believe that Mac OS X is a superior desktop experience compared to Windows. However, I also think that the slate form factor has more promise than desktop or laptop ones, so I’m willing to make the switch (hurry up, Apple).

Obviously, my situation will color my judgement, but I think that’s okay. My goal here isn’t to compare Mac OS X to Windows; it isn’t to whine and complain that a button is in the wrong place, or that it doesn’t look lick-able enough.

My interest lies in learning something about the connection between ideas and the generation of supporting artifacts, between process and user interface workflow, and between user intent and application control.

The IT department tells me the slate arrives this Thursday, and if the following isn’t telling coming from a borderline Mac zealot, I don’t know what is: this is the first Windows PC that I’ve ever been excited about receiving.

Watch this space for my forays into using this old-made-new form factor, and the inevitably comical baptism by fire into the Windows world I thought I’d permanently left behind.

If anything, I promise you it will be interesting.