Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

Re:Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition by snowwrestler on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @12:36AM (#17290728)

Your comment illustrates why Palm Pilots found market success with handwriting recognition (as far as I know, the only product that ever did so).

The trick was that they treated "Graffiti" as a new alphabet that users had to learn. Thus, when the recognition engine failed, many users blamed themselves (i.e. their Graffiti fluency) rather than the product.

In contrast, when products that promised to recognize natural handwriting had a recognition failure, the users tended to blame the products.

It's a good lesson for product development--user satisfaction will depend in part on user expectations.

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Re:Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition by SmellyGeekBoy on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @06:07AM (#17292004)

Wow, what a nostalgia trip! The Graffiti handwriting system was brilliant. I only owned a PalmOS device for a short time (I was very late to the party and they were already old hat) but I picked it up very quickly and still remember how to write most of the "letters".

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Re:Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition by miskin on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @01:02AM (#17290819)

I still think that Graffiti was very fast and efficient. It had real effect on my handwriting and I still see myself simplifying letters in graffiti way when I try to write fast :)

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