Re:In Defense Of The Stylus
by snowwrestler on Friday November 11, 2011 @08:01PM
(#3226777)
About 10 years ago I was working for a consultant and ran a research project on pen-based computing.
We learned that most people who were happy with pen-based computers had gotten them at a steep discount. They felt that the products had shortcomings but that was ok because they were so cheap.
The only two exceptions--pen-based computing products that had found significant success at their MSRP--were Wacom and Palm/Handspring.
The key to the mystery was handwriting recognition. 100% recognition is impossible, even for humans. But while we accept human misses, there is pretty much no tolerance for misses in a computing interface. With a miss, the value of the pen input (speed and natural feel) is lost in the need to correct.
Wacom succeeds because it does not even try to do handwriting recognition.
Palm/Handspring succeeded by inventing new motions for per-letter entry that people had to learn (called Graffiti). This reversed the user expectation: if the recognition failed, many users would assume it was their own fault for not doing the Graffiti entry properly. They wouldn't blame the machine, so their opinion of its value did not suffer.
Styluses are still hugely popular for animators, artists, and some graphic designers. Wacom is still going strong. But any computer that relies on a stylus for text entry is probably doomed to fail.
We learned that most people who were happy with pen-based computers had gotten them at a steep discount. They felt that the products had shortcomings but that was ok because they were so cheap.
The only two exceptions--pen-based computing products that had found significant success at their MSRP--were Wacom and Palm/Handspring.
The key to the mystery was handwriting recognition. 100% recognition is impossible, even for humans. But while we accept human misses, there is pretty much no tolerance for misses in a computing interface. With a miss, the value of the pen input (speed and natural feel) is lost in the need to correct.
Wacom succeeds because it does not even try to do handwriting recognition.
Palm/Handspring succeeded by inventing new motions for per-letter entry that people had to learn (called Graffiti). This reversed the user expectation: if the recognition failed, many users would assume it was their own fault for not doing the Graffiti entry properly. They wouldn't blame the machine, so their opinion of its value did not suffer.
Styluses are still hugely popular for animators, artists, and some graphic designers. Wacom is still going strong. But any computer that relies on a stylus for text entry is probably doomed to fail.