Handwritten emails
By Kristoffer Bohmann, Bohmann Usability
Handwritten emails. Soon handwritten email messages can be sent using a digital pen. Emails are sent using three items: A digital pen, special paper, and a cell phone. The pen works like a traditional pen. You write on a special piece of paper and see your writings as you move the pen. Once you are ready to send the email, check a box on the paper.
The market for the pen are mainly users on the road. McKinsey consultants who register their observations as they walk through a company. UPS workers who deliver packages. Teenagers using the pen for chat and SMS. These users will have a wide range of demands before they choose to adopt the pen.
- Reliability: Users should never experience data loss or connection downtime since they will start perceiving the pen as unreliable. When batteries are low, users should receive an early warning and, preferably, be able to change batteries without data loss. Battery lifetime matters - users who write 10 emails daily don't want to change batteries and ink cartridge weekly.
- Multi-tasking should be supported since users often need to write more than one email or note at the same time. Switching between different messages may be very confusing to users (and the pen). Assume you write two emails at the same time. How do you tell the pen that you have switched from the first message to the next? One solution is to press somewhere on the special paper to activate it.
- Weight and handling: I cannot say how it feels to write with the pen since I never tried. I expect the pen to be heavier than a traditional pen so I wouldn't use it for longer handwritten notes, only brief notes and messages.
Do I use the Anota pen to write emails in a year from now? No. The pen would make my life more complex, not simpler. I prefer the keyboard. And I wouldn't be able to find the special paper when I needed it (why can't I just write a message on any surface?).
I do see one possible application in which the pen could be beneficial to me. I use a paper calendar since it is faster to update and get a view of than any other calendar technology I am aware of. The pen could actually help me store my appointments in an electronic calendar that matches my paper calendar. Best of all: I don't need to remember any special paper, only my calendar. The paper calendar may even outperform or supplement PDA calendars. Send a few bottles of good red wine if you use or patent this idea.
Kristoffer Bohmann
