ProjectProposal-AndrewHao
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
Contents |
History
Getting Things Done
Ever since David Allen published his popular book, "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity", the blogosphere has been abuzz with praise for this time-management methodology, abbreviated as "GTD". The key to this methodology lies in organization-by-context. Every action or tasks is sorted and ordered based on its immediacy and its relevance to a certain task. It received praise from overworked young professionals who needed an intuitive way to organize their goals and tasks.
The Hipster PDA
In early 2004, blogger Merlin Mann of the popular GTD blog 43Folders released a tongue-in-cheek home-brewed PDA known as the "Hipster", constructed solely of 3x5 index cards, a binder clip and a Fischer Space Pen. It was touted as a revolutionary (tongue, again, in cheek) new method of managing personal information, to-do lists and tasks. Tasks and to-do lists were scribed onto color-coded 3x5 notecards and, upon completion, taken out of the stack and disposed. Techno-literate folks (mainly bloggers and IT professionals) and self-proclaimed geeks quickly adopted the new PDA, which combined GTD methodologies with the simplicity and elegance of the notepad, paper and pen (additionally, a cruel irony surfaced when whipping out one's stack of notecards whilst others fumbled about on $500 PDAs). Many users raved about the visceral sense of satisfaction that emerged when completing a task, ripping off a notecard from the stack.
Proposal: The Digitally-Enabled Hipster (or, the HipsterPlus)
While the very advantage of the Hipster was its disconnect from the virtual world and its ability to represent tasks in the physical realm, I propose a digital augmentation of the Hipster's capabilities that would leverage the best of both the physical and electronic worlds. Index cards would be pre-printed with the Anoto dot pattern, allowing tasks on each card to be recorded onto memory. Upon download to a computer, a PIM application (to be coded) would allow easy tracking, logging, and organization of tasks.
Target User Group
Generally Speaking
Certainly, the Hipster (along with much of the GTD-adhering crowd) has been mainly techno-savvy early adopters with their RSS readers primed and tuned to the hottest new thing. However, more mainstream press is giving the GTD movement more exposure and legitimacy in the everyday world. Thus, I would fine-tune the HipsterPlus to target mobile young professionals (the type who may have read of GTD or the Hipster in a side article of the Wall Street Journal, not necessarily on the cutting edge of technology but who likely have enough guts and gumption to master the use of their Palms, Treos or Blackberries).
Freelancing Fred
Say Fred the Freelancer is a graphic designer and web developer who works from home, often managing 3 simultaneous projects, meeting with clients, and attending conferences all while mindful of his kids' weekly soccer practices and grocery shopping. He has tried to use a Palm but has gotten frustrated with its slow rate of data entry and his inability to put in the time and effort to keep the thing fully updated with his life. So he gave up. He is now using a Hipster, which he loves because of its simplicity, but still wishes that it could sync with his personal computer so that he can track his tasks in Outlook.
Problem Description
Lack of Integration
Despite the original Hipster's efficiency, elegance and simplicity, it offers no integration into existing electronic applications (say, a PIM organizer such as Microsoft's Outlook or a web service such as Google Calendar). I am unable to sync my Hipster's data across multiple devices (albeit if only an image). Data in the digital realm is unbound by media restrictions and, with the advent of new handwriting recognition technology, the ability to transfer information from the real world into a useful, digital realm becomes more and more advantageous.
Lack of Logging (or, Paper Ain't Permanent)
There is no electronic log of all tasks added/completed to a Hipster deck (ironically, however, we can speak of a paper trail). Logging and replication may be essential and important to certain professionals who may place more trust in digital bits than in burnable, loseable, trashable, tossable paper.
Problem Context & Solution
Context
Users use the Hipster PDA because they find their lives being cluttered with nonintuitive gadgets and devices and find a return to simplicity (e.g. jotting notes on index cards) an easy way to gather, store, share and retrieve information. They are high-powered individuals who usually find themselves with a heavy workload and many projects to track at once. They are attracted to the Hipster and GTD because it offers them an intuitive and stress-free way to increase their productivity. However, they wish to maintain some synchronity with their existing PIM clients on their computers.
The Virtual/Physical Interface
The bulk of the challenge comes in designing a PIM interface that can deal specifically with visual images (jotted notes)--this is with the assumption that digital handwriting recognition is research that is far from complete. Metadata will be provided by design of various fields on the pre-printed cards (see solution sketch for more details).
The Beauty of the HipsterPlus
The HipsterPlus degrades wonderfully. The digital pen logging functions perform silently underneath the primary goal of tracking things on the Hipster. Computer or no computer, the Hipster continues to do what is expected of it. Should one forget to sync for a few days, task management is still primarily performed on the index cards.
Alternatives
No commercial alternatives exist, although the Hipster-Anoto combination was briefly mentioned and suggested in a paper describing physical/virtual interfaces by the same Stanford HCI team that proposed ButterflyNet: Mobility, Fluidity and Physicality (PDF)
Solution Sketch
