Misleading Photo For New Microsoft Tablet Formfactor
Twitter’s buzzing with technolust based on an Engadget article picturing a Microsoft concept-computer.
Looks lovely, but the photo is misleading. It shows lines of cursive writing that are fraction of a size of the reader’s fingernail. Take a look at this blowup:
Based on my fingernail, that cursive writing is about 3mm tall. You might be able to read 8 point cursive handwriting on a high-resolution dispay, but there’s no way under Heaven that you can write anywhere near that size, especially not using a stylus on a glass screen.
In fact, using a stylus on a Tablet PC, you write about 33-50% larger than you do on a piece of paper because your cursive writing is based on the muscle memory of pushing a pen or pencil over paper, which is more resistant. Personally, my experience is that on the 12″ diagonal screen of my Tablet PC, it “feels” like a writing area close to a 4″ x 6″ index card.
Don’t get me wrong — the Microsoft Courier looks like a great form-factor. But the user experience implied by that photo is not realistic. It’s perfectly possible to imagine that what’s shown is a zoomed-out page and that when you’re writing and sketching you’re zoomed in to a much smaller viewport. But the user experience that everyone dreams of — the user experience of a digital Moleskine notebook — requires innovation in either the screen surface or the stylus tip. As far as the iPad and the idea that dragging your great big finger across a piece of glass is going to be an acceptable way to write or draw, the sooner you give up on that hope, the better.
[...] Larry O’Brien of Knowing .NET has taken to task the main photo from the latest Courier sneak peek, pointing out that the writing shown on the screen could not have been written at that size. He went so far as to sector the screen and determine that the lettering was only 3mm tall. Yep, no way to write that small, but so what? [...]
Your comments about the size of your writing on a screen versus pen and paper didn’t seem right to me so I decided to check my own past experience. I regularly use pen and paper for note taking at work but use a tablet PC for notetaking in classes I attend. Upon checking the two I don’t see significant difference in size. I believe that my writing size is influenced more by ht erange of motion of the muscles I use for writing than external influences such as the pen and paper or the stylus and the screen although many tablet users do comment on the feel of the screen surface and the stylus tip. Many active stylus PC do come with interchangeable tips to allow for different “feel” when writing and from th ecomments I have read the intereaction of tip and screen is also dependent upon the screen treatment that the manufacturer has applied to the screen surface. I have seen a anumber of references to people peeling off the treatmemnt on the screen surface (or applying a screen protector) to change the intereaction of the pen tip and screen.
It should therefor be possible to emulate the same feeling between stylus tip and screen that you characteristivcally have between pen anad paper wich would, in your case, allow your writing on th escree t obe th esame size as if you used pen and paper.
I’m not going to disagree with your assessment, but since we are talking about vapor ware here, there is some room for interpretation. (note: I also call the IPad vaporware until it is generally available).
But, this device allows you to take pictures. Could it be a scaled down image?
Also, are we assuming you cannot zoom in and out?
But misleading? Heck ya. The entire thing is misleading until people start getting their hands on it. But also cool as all heck.
I wonder if it can play Flash? :)
@cybertactix Well, of course mileage may vary on writing, but the “muscle memory” issue was actually explained to me by someone from Microsoft’s Tablet team, so I think it’s a real issue. Can I ask what machine you use? Screen protectors definitely add resistance. I had not heard of alternative stylus tips — do you have any pointers for options?
@Chris : The idea of a digital journal that could use its camera as a scanner is a good one — all the h/w exists, it just needs some software innovation to support the workflow (including integration with OneNote, of course!)
As far as Flash, who knows? But I’ll betcha’ anything it plays Silverlight!
Apparently, you have overlooked the very real practice of writing and then zooming out.
Larry: I mentioned it explicitly.
Can’t you just zoom in/out with a little gesture?
Larry;
I am using a Lenovo X61 Tablet. It came with a couple of different tips.
I would suggest checking out the forums on both http://www.gottabemobile.com and http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com. There are a number of people there who are a lot more particular about their stylus tips and how they feel when writing than I am.
I was going to tell you that your article got referenced on the gottabemobile.com main site but I see you’ve already discovered that.
BTW, I find that the barrel size of the pen also seems to influence my writing size, larger barrel, larger text.
@Justin Yes, I’d be shocked if there wasn’t some kind of zoom available. That’s what I meant when I talked about a zoomed-in viewport. I’m not saying that the image is _impossible_, just that it’s misleading because it implies a user experience that is similar to the UX you get from a similar-sized pad / notebook of paper. I don’t think you can mimic that UX with current technology (at least no technology I’ve ever used).
My _opinion_ is that designers might fruitfully pursue a different UX. In the same way that the typewriter (eventually) succeeded despite having a radically different UX than pen and paper, I think that designers should be pursuing more innovative designs. For instance, I’m a big fan of the SHARK / ShapeWriter input technique, which is comparable to shorthand.