GroupBrainstorm-Group:ThePenIsMightier
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
Contents |
Brainstorm
- Online interactive games
- - Online interactive Pictionary
- - Online Joey's Stupid Game (sketching game)
- - Online Battleship
- Medical filing system – patient data sheets
- - Send medical information to other doctors for review
- - Different departments can annotate the same patient record w/o the hardcopy
- - Doctor's prescription can be confirmed with patient's medical/allergy history
- Emergency response forms
- - Phone operator has a form to fill out when 911 is dialed
- - Form can be linked with a display giving output
- - Upon filling out fields on the form, a database can be queried to auto-complete form on display
- - Pen can provide feedback (LED? vibrate a la cell phone?) when form's field has already been autocompleted
- - Emergency response team can fill out forms about symptoms to receive instructions on immediate treatment
- - Symptom information can provide a diagnosis, and then display the address of the nearest hospital equipped to deal with that affliction, or with least busy emergency room
- Music composition (sheet music)
- - Music composition within specified framework (i.e.- no freehand notes, but selectable icons on a template)
- - Music composition with import into common digital music composition software (Finale notepad)
- - Music entry on a drawing of a keyboard, playing keyboard via Anoto pen
- - Live music playback with music notation
- - Automatically generated harmonies while the sheet music is being written
- - Automatically creating bar markers via the tempo information provided
- - Allowing sections of music to be easily moved around/altered (standard editing notation from normal writing)
- - Allowing instrument changes at the touch of a pen, use MIDI map
- - Tapping pen as registering beats for a percussion instrument, chosen by midi map (register when pen touches paper, when pen is removed from paper)
- DMV forms - no more lines!
- Government fill-out forms
- - Tax forms, can walk around writing data into tax forms, later dock pen and have computations automatically calculated
- - Write down financial information _during the year_, and have it automatically sent to tax forms so that they are nearly complete when time to file
- Forms you fill out at home and auto-send to department that needs it after docking the pen
- Multimedia Travel Journal(or any journal that can be archived out of the book or later blogged)
- - Easily add digital camera pictures, like in that biological field study
- Handwritten Blogging
- - Add blog picture placeholders, as in field biology research implementation
- - Can blog anywhere near wireless networks
- - Elderly (or technologically adverse) can make handwritten journals with Anoto pen, have it streamed into a blog
- - Allow people to blog as soon as they see something blogworthy, instead of when they next are by a computer.
- - Allow people to blog in short time periods, where it would make no sense to even turn on a computer, ie. bus ride, or passenger in a vehicle
- - Song lyrics: when detected, pop up links to iTunes store, etc
- - Allow for finding full song lyrics after writing an excerpt.
- - Allow people to blog with comfortable pen+paper, as opposed to carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing keyboard.
- Lecture notes: take, have searchable and shareable copy
- Digital Blackboard - Realtime projection of teacher's desk notes to wall as he/she writes them
- - Archival of notes for student (and peer teacher) review
- - Live resizing of information (no problem for people who may not be able to read the board easily)
- Standardized testing
- - Ensuring that timed tests end uniformly for everyone in the room when the time is up (Do not record after end time)
- - Ensuring that no one starts a timed test early (Do not record until time starts)
- - Get results back within a day (or perhaps even moments), not several months
- Photo print sorting (get photo index, mark up which ones you want copies of)
- - Categorize pictures on the back of each individual picture
- - Have physical photo linked to Kodak database, write organizing information on photo, have computer automatically download digital copy from Kodak
- Enhance GPS system with paper map input system (no need for character by character input to map)
- Chat with Annoto pen (no need for typing, live feed to chat recipient)
- Digital input for commuters (subway/train) who have little room for larger input methods (or no connection)
- Blogging with special functions (i.e.- underlining for Wikipedia entry links for certain words, boxing for dictionary lookups)
- Storyboarding Movies/TV
- Storyboarding Comic Books
- Essay Editor: ocr + standard editing notation
- Comics Drawing
- Checking retail inventory (fill in counts/discrepancies as you walk around store/warehouse)
- - Restaurant ingredient inventories
- Taking attendance at grade school: automatically registering attendance when the student writes
- Timecard sign-ins for hourly workers: time begins when they put pen to paper
- Drafting purposes, allow sketches to be transformed into CAD files
- - Convert labels on diagram into actual dimensions on page (writing 3feet beside a line makes a 3-foot-long pipe in the diagram
How We Selected
After a prolific and productive brainstorming session, we narrowed our focus to seven or eight ideas based on access to target users, applicability to the affordances of the Anoto technology, and difficulty of implementation. We wanted something challenging but not impossible to deliver given the time frame. Finally, we wanted to solve a real problem and work on something that had the potential to be of real value to real people. Blog-Anywhere was the clear winner.
Winning Idea: Blog-Anywhere
One of the main ways that people share ideas is write them down. People love to share their ideas, given the proper forum. One can see this in the increasing number of blogging web sites and blog membership rates. However, despite the greater ease of use in regards to blogging, where users can write in a WYSIWYG format as opposed to writing html code, there is still a significant learning curve to using a blog. People uncomfortable with typing, such as the elderly, may be adverse to learning this new communication medium. Also, blogging currently requires an internet-ready computer at hand. Those who have a desktop computer, and do not need the affordances of the laptop, are forced to remember their ideas until the next blogging opportunity arises, perhaps at the end of the day, or perhaps days later, after a long trip. We wish to move blogging away from these trappings and reintroduce a format that many are more comfortable with: the interface of pen and paper, using the Anoto Digital system.
Target User
One of the target user groups is the "blogger on the go," the idea-maker who likes to write about what's going on around them at nearly any time, and requires the affordances of mobility and quick entry. Another target user group is the people who currently write by hand into paper journals, who would like to spread their opinions to other users on the internet, yet not abandon their mode of thought-recording. The elderly comprise the third target user group; once the software has been properly configured, the complexity of posting to the blog is as easy as putting pen to paper, an important feature for this user group.
Problem Description
Blogging is often initiated by a spur-of-the-moment event. Many people are simply not connected to computers all day. However, they have ideas all day long. We allow people to record their thoughts at all times.
Most blogging interfaces currently require a computer and an online connection. We focus on blogging, since bloggers often have to remember an event until the next time they write, but this system can be used for note-taking as well. In the same way many people enjoy curling up with a paper book, some people just prefer writing on paper to typing at a computer.
Context
Web blogging is one of the hottest trends in pop culture. However, because blogging requires a computer and internet access, there are times that bloggers cannot add entries to their blog conveniently. For example, although some public transit systems are attempting to add wireless networks, this is not widely available to the typical blogger and certainly is not an option from, say, a park, or the passenger seat of a vehicle.
When inspiration strikes, the process of writing ideas down on scraps of paper, and then having to transcribe to a computer later never seems attractive. The seasoned blogger thinks how easy it will be to simply wait and document those thoughts later, but all too often the idea or event is forgotten or becomes fuzzy with time. Using our technology, bloggers will have the freedom to scribe entries whenever and wherever they choose to, using an interface that we all know best: pen and paper. In addition, our technology will also encourage people who are not as computer-savvy to try keeping their own web blog.
Why Anoto
The write-now, dock-later paradigm dictated by the Anoto pen lends itself naturally to the application of blogging in the wild or jotting down spur-of-the-moment ideas for later development. Given the size, weight, and battery life of the Anoto pen compared to that of the typical laptop computer, the Anoto pen is preferable for the mobility it offers. The Anoto pen also allows users to blog using a natural mapping. Writing by hand is an interface learned at an early age, and an interface that the Anoto pen readily connects to the digital world, from anywhere, at any time.
Another important consideration is the cost involved. A typical cost for a relatively portable (less than 5 pounds, Wifi enabled, 4+ hours of battery life) laptop computer is greater than $1000 USD. In contrast, the Nokia release of the Anoto Digital Pen system is a mere $219 USD retail, while the Logitech release of the system is an even cheaper $149 USD.
Aside from these more technical details, the Anoto system opens greater possibilites in terms of sketching on blogs (a nearly non-existant phenomenon, given the details of posting any sketch) and the ease of addition of pictures to blogs. We move this out of the realm of deviant art. Many people like to illustrate an idea with a sketch or a doodle, or remember an object by a sketch when a digital camera is not immediately available. However, in current blogging technology, the complexity of adding a sketch to a blog makes it too difficult for almost all users to do, thus limiting their communication options. The Anoto system, given it's instant digital translation of pen strokes, brings this method of communicating ideas to the forum of blogging. Also, there is a high learning curve when trying to add digital pictures to a blog, especially in a specific place. The Anoto system allows for putting a picture placeholder anywhere in a blog entry, thus simplifying the process and making it available to more novice users.
Solution Sketch
With the increasing ubiquity of wireless networks, updates may be possible by just walking near a wireless hotspot. At update time (whether wirelessly or by docking), the latest journal entries will get automatically converted to images and uploaded to the user's online blog. Advanced users may choose to assign time-sensitive media. For example, photos taken concurrently with the handwritten blog entry could be easily associated with an entry like in the field biologist ButterflyNet project.
We are initially planning to steer clear of OCR, given the immature state of most available open source OCR solutions, and the difficulty of discerning sketches from text. We think this may be seen as a feature, since allowing the blogger's handwriting to show through in the final post will lend a very personal touch to the blog.
We are considering, however, the use of gestures to signal entry start and stop and this idea may become a key tool for adding additional features (mark section private, delete section, etc.)
