I am a writer...well, not yet anyway. But soon I will be there. I mean, it is not a place, you know. Not a physical place. But still one refers to it as 'there', 'over there', and so on. 'I have come, Malaysia,' exclaimed a man, who thought he had 'achieved his goal of doing business there'. We use physical things to refer to our psychological states. I say that I am a writer when some of my writings are published, not until then. So, it is really a matter of time and not a place at all. And yet, we use the metaphor of a place. When we travel, we await the destination. It takes time to reach. The goal is much like a physical destination. It takes time to achieve one's goal. Attainment of a goal is in this sense an arrival at a destination.
There are, to be sure, many such metaphors which are used in the psychological realm without so much as a thought. It is definitely very easy to express oneself and also be assured of being understood. But as it always happens when one uses metaphors there is a catch. If one takes the example literally of reaching one's destination, one is absolutely certain that it exists. In the thought world however the goal is ephemeral. It is not something one can see on a map. It has no routes to take one there. There is no GPS to guide one to the place. We don't even know that it exists. And yet, we say happily, unchallenged, 'I am going to be there one day.'
What exactly is the problem with using such a metaphor? First, it gives me the feeling that the goal is out there and I am here. That it takes time to reach. Never for a moment does it occur to me that the goal is a figment of my imagination. It is something that exists only in my mind. That, it has no reference to anything that is out there in the physical world. That, it is neither near, nor far from me. That, in fact it has nothing to do with time at all, since there is absolutely no movement involved! That, it is just a chimera. To borrow another metaphor from the physical world, it is like an oasis in a desert.
This is something that needs more investigation. Simply put, this urge to achieve, to attain, is a becoming. From a non-writer, I want to become a writer. The implication here is that from one state of being I want to move into another state. This change of state needs to be measured, to be quantified, to be monitored. Measuring movement is what we know very well. It is what we do everyday. It is what we use in going from home to place of work, from the earth to the moon and so on. This is a way that we have discovered to fulfill our desires, aspirations, ambitions. It is something we do automatically. We don't even think about it. This movement is not a physical movement and we know it. Whenever we desire something, we are on a journey in time. We just exchange space for time. The body after all lives in space and the mind lives in time.
This way of thinking begs the questions: why do we think this way? What is the implication of thinking this way?
Why do we think this way? That is how the brain is wired to function, I suppose. There could be a scientific explanation for it, perhaps even a psychological one. The answer could be simply this: it is the only way we know. There could be other ways, but as humans we all think this way and we have not found any other way. We don't even know if there is another way of thinking.
To answer the question 'what the implication is of thinking in the way we do', we have sufficient evidence. We may have to start exploring more into this movement in the mind in order to unravel the implication.
We have seen that a state of change involves a psychological movement from one state to another. We may seek a change of state because we are not happy with our present state. We are not happy because it is not satisfying, it is not profitable, it is not edifying, it is not lucrative, it is not considered important, it is lacking in power, it has a social stigma and so on and so on. The reason could be anything, even more than one. We have decided to stop being what we are and have resolved to become something else.
We are aware that it is not easy to change one's state. It involves much hardship and demands perseverance. It means struggle, frustration, fear and many other feelings we may experience once we have embarked on this journey of change of state. 'Embark' is a nautical word and journey is what changes our location. It is the movement that we are talking about. All the feelings that we encounter while on a physical journey we experience in our psychological endeavor too. By thinking in terms of a physical metaphor we have primed ourselves to experience similar thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings that we must have experienced in the beginning of time when we evolved from animal into human form. It is a question of survival in the jungle all over again, but this time in a jungle of our own making. It is not surprising that the phrase survival of the fittest still applies in the environment that we have built over millennia.
In order to overcome the difficulties in the attainment of our desired state, we have devised means as diverse as the species on earth. We employ power derived from position, wealth, status and knowledge in the achievement of our goals. We have devised laws to curtail excesses in the use of the artifices afore-mentioned, but there are always some among us who are more clever and enterprising in defying those laws and creating new laws to justify our actions. The world we have built is the movement of desire in all of us.
Desire is a movement of the mind from one state to another. It is in this movement that we live all our waking moments and in sleep too as dreams. It is desire that is the motive power behind our world. Our world is desire in action. Our pleasure and our pain is the desire fulfillment or desire denial. All our feelings are encompassed in this single movement triggered by desire.
The implication of thinking in terms of physical metaphors is the birth of this world we live in, the world that is just as beautiful, as dangerous and as inscrutable as the physical world around us. We have built a parallel world and there is no escape from it. The force of desire is as strong as the force of gravity. We may occasionally fly out of its influence - like the artists do sometimes, or the enlightened ones - but return we must to its haunt willy-nilly.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Getting Things Done
I have a thousand things going through my mind and I need a nifty organizer to order them.
I toyed with the idea of retaining an assistant, preferably a female. It is not often that one comes across a successful man who has not been aided by his female secretary to parcel his time out in the most efficient manner. A personal assistant, meticulous to detail, efficient as a machine, one who can drive like a bulldozer and yet be generous and intimate - who but a biological complement can fill such a role? Alas, I let go of the idea even before it bred fantasies that dwelt more on personal rather than professional assistance. My mind still reeled of a thousand things and would do well to focus on getting things done.
I looked for alternatives and resolved to solve my problem in the only way that this digital age of ours dictated. I thought of an e-assistant, an entity of zeroes and ones that is unlikely to generate feelings of intimacy, real or virtual. I began to hunt for a digital assistant that would help me in sorting and organizing the myriad things floating in my mind, things that ranged from paying my bills to doing a project for the e-learning community.
I repose a great faith in the digital world. I especially like the 'e' that precedes its services, like email for example. The 'e' has a special meaning for me, much more than its naive expansion to electronic; to me it stands for 'enabling', something that enables me to do things that normally I wouldn't do. I like to think that it enables me to speed up, to be more productive, to be alert and efficient in getting things done. And so I surfed the web for an enabling assistant.
I found a program and immediately started using it. I entered into it all the things that romped unbridled through my mind: a motley of bills due, house repairs, tracking child's homework, reminders for anniversaries, tasks from work place, things to buy, catch up with reading, and a host of things too numerous to list here. The list got very long and soon I felt the need to categorize the items in it. This program lacked that feature.
The world wide web offers many programs for free and so I sat down before my desktop once again to hunt for the right assistant. I found one that allows me to organize my TODOs under headings. Now everything looked pretty neat. All I need to do was fire up my computer every morning and pick some task to do and at the end of the day to strike it out from the list. As simple as it is to type www in the address bar of my browser.
I began attending to my list items and disposed of them in a way that best suited my mood. Not long after that I received a reminder from the electricity department to pay up or face a power cut. I hastened to my computer program and realized that it had no feature to alert me. Nor is there any way for me to prioritize my tasks.
I fired up Google and hoped I would get lucky this time. I found an organizer that allowed me to prioritize my tasks and set reminders. Nevertheless, I missed my tasks as ever before and found myself thinking about the problem. If I can solve this one problem all my other problems would resolve easily. There must be a simple solution to a difficult problem; otherwise, what is the point of progress anyway? After some thinking - I had temporarily pushed aside other things that kept pressing me for attention - I realized that unless my computer was up and running I would not get an audible reminder. Even if I did get it, I may not be close by to hear it. Even if I was within earshot, it might drown in the surrounding noise, which is usually the case - a blaring TV or the children battling it out for supremacy or more likely the wife is screaming her head off to get things done or me in the middle of one of those interminable meetings with my team at work.
An idea zoomed into my head: I must be mobile. Chained to a desktop is like a donkey tied to a post. It can go only as far as the tether permits. I must soar like the eagle in the sky. So I decided to purchase a mobile phone to organize my life. I spent a good deal of time looking for the right phone whose capability must include, among other things that I dare not mention here, a handy organizer. I purchased a smartphone with a built-in organizer. What an idea, Sirji, I told myself.
I loaded all my tasks into my smartphone, which faithfully provided the alerts I set for them. Very soon I ran into a snag. It beeped at the most inappropriate times. How could I pay my bill when I was engaged in another task, say a report to my boss, one that needed my attention right away? Or maybe I was at the wrong place at the wrong time? The tasks piled up and begged for my attention, but they will have to wait for a more intelligent organizer.
I Googled for inspiration and found enlightenment in David Allen’s GTD. Allen I learned was a corporate busybee who discovered a way to bail out struggling humanity burdened with tasks too numerous to attend to sanely and still stay healthy. Getting things done had always been my priority in life and so I started to hunt for a GTD app to run in my smartphone. I was overjoyed to note that there were many implementations freely available; I am a diehard believer in free enterprise and any application that is available gratis is bound to end up in my repertoire of useful programs. With a heartburn, however, I realized that no GTD program was ever written for my handset, except one that cost a bomb.
I returned to Google. I found that the world has moved away to more advanced systems: in the digital age, I remember someone pointed out, three calendar months equal one Internet year.
Being upwardly mobile I quickly jumped on the gadget bandwagon and got myself a tablet, pioneered by Apple: the iPad. Since Allen’s GTD app seemed pricey I looked for freebies and found one after a long search. The GTD app, loyally mimicking Allen's philosophy, provided the feature-set that I had sorely missed during all these years.
I sat down with my handy brand new gadget and started to load my tasks into the app’s Inbox. Next I sorted them according to the features - Today, Next, Someday, Waiting and so on. But I realized - I am pretty good at realizing things pretty fast - that this was not going to work unless these tasks were also available in all other devices. After all, I am not using the tablet everywhere, not all the time anyway. I use the desktop and my laptop, too. My smartphone holds a lot of things to do, too. What I need, I told myself, is a way to synchronize all my tasks and ensure that they are available no matter which device I am working on at the moment.
I turned to Google for help. I learned that I am not the only person in the whole wide world to face this problem. A sizable chunk of humanity is struggling to meet this situation which has become a crisis. There is a way: trust human genius to come up with a simple solution to a difficult problem. The answer is in the cloud.
What I needed, what all the brothers and sisters (and wives and lovers) of the world needed, was a place in the cyber space that is accessible from any device. A place that you can call your own. The only requirement was that the device is Internet ready and the owner subscribed to a service provider. My joy knew no bounds for I had the right devices and the right connections. Now I must look for the right organizer that weaves my life through a myriad devices into a seamless whole. In an increasingly fragmented world, a cloud service is like a balm for the pain in the ... ur ... neck.
There were many cloud services to choose from and I selected one that was free. Never mind if your phone does not have an app for it, it is all there in the world wide web. You can reach for it any time and from anywhere, for the world is also becoming increasingly connected. I loaded all my tasks into a cloud organizer and at once felt at peace within myself and with the world. Now I am going to be more productive: after all, work is worship and I work hard to get things done. To get organized at any rate to get things done.
But the cloud organizer was not based on GTD, the task manager for the toiling humanity. Alas, no cloud service supported GTD out of the box. You had to invent ways to overcome the limitations of the service, get around its kinks, and setup a home-grown modus operandi that serves your needs.
I went back to Google and found a thousand ways to do it. I am still soaring in the cloud looking for the right approach for getting things done, the thousand things on my mind.
I toyed with the idea of retaining an assistant, preferably a female. It is not often that one comes across a successful man who has not been aided by his female secretary to parcel his time out in the most efficient manner. A personal assistant, meticulous to detail, efficient as a machine, one who can drive like a bulldozer and yet be generous and intimate - who but a biological complement can fill such a role? Alas, I let go of the idea even before it bred fantasies that dwelt more on personal rather than professional assistance. My mind still reeled of a thousand things and would do well to focus on getting things done.
I looked for alternatives and resolved to solve my problem in the only way that this digital age of ours dictated. I thought of an e-assistant, an entity of zeroes and ones that is unlikely to generate feelings of intimacy, real or virtual. I began to hunt for a digital assistant that would help me in sorting and organizing the myriad things floating in my mind, things that ranged from paying my bills to doing a project for the e-learning community.
I repose a great faith in the digital world. I especially like the 'e' that precedes its services, like email for example. The 'e' has a special meaning for me, much more than its naive expansion to electronic; to me it stands for 'enabling', something that enables me to do things that normally I wouldn't do. I like to think that it enables me to speed up, to be more productive, to be alert and efficient in getting things done. And so I surfed the web for an enabling assistant.
I found a program and immediately started using it. I entered into it all the things that romped unbridled through my mind: a motley of bills due, house repairs, tracking child's homework, reminders for anniversaries, tasks from work place, things to buy, catch up with reading, and a host of things too numerous to list here. The list got very long and soon I felt the need to categorize the items in it. This program lacked that feature.
The world wide web offers many programs for free and so I sat down before my desktop once again to hunt for the right assistant. I found one that allows me to organize my TODOs under headings. Now everything looked pretty neat. All I need to do was fire up my computer every morning and pick some task to do and at the end of the day to strike it out from the list. As simple as it is to type www in the address bar of my browser.
I began attending to my list items and disposed of them in a way that best suited my mood. Not long after that I received a reminder from the electricity department to pay up or face a power cut. I hastened to my computer program and realized that it had no feature to alert me. Nor is there any way for me to prioritize my tasks.
I fired up Google and hoped I would get lucky this time. I found an organizer that allowed me to prioritize my tasks and set reminders. Nevertheless, I missed my tasks as ever before and found myself thinking about the problem. If I can solve this one problem all my other problems would resolve easily. There must be a simple solution to a difficult problem; otherwise, what is the point of progress anyway? After some thinking - I had temporarily pushed aside other things that kept pressing me for attention - I realized that unless my computer was up and running I would not get an audible reminder. Even if I did get it, I may not be close by to hear it. Even if I was within earshot, it might drown in the surrounding noise, which is usually the case - a blaring TV or the children battling it out for supremacy or more likely the wife is screaming her head off to get things done or me in the middle of one of those interminable meetings with my team at work.
An idea zoomed into my head: I must be mobile. Chained to a desktop is like a donkey tied to a post. It can go only as far as the tether permits. I must soar like the eagle in the sky. So I decided to purchase a mobile phone to organize my life. I spent a good deal of time looking for the right phone whose capability must include, among other things that I dare not mention here, a handy organizer. I purchased a smartphone with a built-in organizer. What an idea, Sirji, I told myself.
I loaded all my tasks into my smartphone, which faithfully provided the alerts I set for them. Very soon I ran into a snag. It beeped at the most inappropriate times. How could I pay my bill when I was engaged in another task, say a report to my boss, one that needed my attention right away? Or maybe I was at the wrong place at the wrong time? The tasks piled up and begged for my attention, but they will have to wait for a more intelligent organizer.
I Googled for inspiration and found enlightenment in David Allen’s GTD. Allen I learned was a corporate busybee who discovered a way to bail out struggling humanity burdened with tasks too numerous to attend to sanely and still stay healthy. Getting things done had always been my priority in life and so I started to hunt for a GTD app to run in my smartphone. I was overjoyed to note that there were many implementations freely available; I am a diehard believer in free enterprise and any application that is available gratis is bound to end up in my repertoire of useful programs. With a heartburn, however, I realized that no GTD program was ever written for my handset, except one that cost a bomb.
I returned to Google. I found that the world has moved away to more advanced systems: in the digital age, I remember someone pointed out, three calendar months equal one Internet year.
Being upwardly mobile I quickly jumped on the gadget bandwagon and got myself a tablet, pioneered by Apple: the iPad. Since Allen’s GTD app seemed pricey I looked for freebies and found one after a long search. The GTD app, loyally mimicking Allen's philosophy, provided the feature-set that I had sorely missed during all these years.
I sat down with my handy brand new gadget and started to load my tasks into the app’s Inbox. Next I sorted them according to the features - Today, Next, Someday, Waiting and so on. But I realized - I am pretty good at realizing things pretty fast - that this was not going to work unless these tasks were also available in all other devices. After all, I am not using the tablet everywhere, not all the time anyway. I use the desktop and my laptop, too. My smartphone holds a lot of things to do, too. What I need, I told myself, is a way to synchronize all my tasks and ensure that they are available no matter which device I am working on at the moment.
I turned to Google for help. I learned that I am not the only person in the whole wide world to face this problem. A sizable chunk of humanity is struggling to meet this situation which has become a crisis. There is a way: trust human genius to come up with a simple solution to a difficult problem. The answer is in the cloud.
What I needed, what all the brothers and sisters (and wives and lovers) of the world needed, was a place in the cyber space that is accessible from any device. A place that you can call your own. The only requirement was that the device is Internet ready and the owner subscribed to a service provider. My joy knew no bounds for I had the right devices and the right connections. Now I must look for the right organizer that weaves my life through a myriad devices into a seamless whole. In an increasingly fragmented world, a cloud service is like a balm for the pain in the ... ur ... neck.
There were many cloud services to choose from and I selected one that was free. Never mind if your phone does not have an app for it, it is all there in the world wide web. You can reach for it any time and from anywhere, for the world is also becoming increasingly connected. I loaded all my tasks into a cloud organizer and at once felt at peace within myself and with the world. Now I am going to be more productive: after all, work is worship and I work hard to get things done. To get organized at any rate to get things done.
But the cloud organizer was not based on GTD, the task manager for the toiling humanity. Alas, no cloud service supported GTD out of the box. You had to invent ways to overcome the limitations of the service, get around its kinks, and setup a home-grown modus operandi that serves your needs.
I went back to Google and found a thousand ways to do it. I am still soaring in the cloud looking for the right approach for getting things done, the thousand things on my mind.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
The Touch Experience
A mobile device is unlike anything that we have experienced on a personal computer. For decades we have been using PCs and its use therefore has become almost second nature to most of us. A desktop computer has a file system, a windows explorer, a bunch of icons on the desktop, a wizard of windows for the installation of applications, a changeable hard drive and so on. The use of an application like the notepad on a Windows PC has ingrained in us the habit of a menu, a sub-menu, menu items like save and save-as etc. The same person when confronted with a touch device like the iPad feels completely out of place. The reason is that apart from a couple of things like the virtual keyboard and a bunch of icons, there is nothing familiar about the user experience.
Take for example a simple notes application. Apart from music and pictures, taking notes is the most frequent use on an electronic device, be it a tablet or a PC. After booting up the PC, which takes a while depending on the type of system you have, we fire up the notes application from a short-cut if we have one, or select from a long list of applications from the Programs menu. Then you type some text using the large keyboard and watching the monitor at the same time. You need to save the document from time to time, for a power outage, a program or system crash may suddenly wipe out all your hard work in a trice.
The saving is a two-step process: when the save dialog box opens you type in a title for your note and then select a drive and a folder to save your note in. You must remember where you have saved your note if you must avoid the agony of a desperate search of the entire system. The save operation is performed by a series of mouse clicks. The click interface is the cornerstone of a windows-based computer.
Now, let us take a look at a notes application, called app for short, on a touch device. The important difference at the very outside between a PC and a tablet, for example, is a touch interface as opposed to a click interface. Even the keyboard is minimal, prompts for text completion, provides access to other less used keys in an intuitive way and can be hidden while scrolling the page. There is to begin with the text that one is typing and nothing else - everything else is out of the way. No toolbar icons, no need to keep saving during typing, windows and menu bars cluttering the screen - nothing, but you and your text. This is a major difference and one that every app on the handheld device must and some do exploit to the fullest possible degree to provide ease of use and aid in productivity.
A full charged battery on a handheld device lasts as long as eight to hours of working, which is more than any laptop is likely to provide. Saving can be done automatically as you type, so there is no threat of data loss. A good notes app will provide a feature that allows a user to start typing as soon as the app opens. Even the virtual keyboard is open and ready to receive input. This is a feature that most mobile note taking apps lack. Riding on the traditional PC bandwagon, some apps even go so far as to ask you to type in a title, select a folder to save it in and even expects the user to touch the save button! This is a legacy that is to be entirely eschewed in the design of a notes app on a mobile device.
A truly useful app starts up ready for typing, uses the first line as title, auto-saves the text as you type, saves the document in a folder such as Inbox (any name would do for that matter - general, root, default etc.) and allows to pour out your thoughts as though they were nuggets of divine utterances awaiting consecration. A touch device is meant to be fast and minimal in startup.
The question of saving to a desired folder may be addressed by the user using gestures. Again, it is important to remember that a touch is significantly different from a mouse click. Compared to a touch gesture, the closest a mouse gesture can come to is drag-and-drop. Gestures by touch on the other hand could be numerous and simple, very intuitive and eminently satisfying from a user experience point of view. When the user has finished typing s/he might want to place it in a certain folder. This can be accomplished using touch gestures in the following way.
After the text is drafted, slide the finger on the screen to right. A menu opens on the left with a list of folders previously created. It also shows the folder Inbox where the current document is saved. In order to create a new folder, simply pull the left menu down. A new folder is added to the list with its name box empty and a cursor positioned in it ready for typing. The name box could also have a default name such as New Folder selected and ready to be typed over or left as is. An 'x' button in the box is available to erase the name. This gesture is fluid, nutritive, minimal and simple to use. No plus button or extra windows with their own set of buttons. A long press on the newly created folder may open up a link to Dropbox. Now to move our note from the Inbox to the new folder, say, My Notes.
Place a finger on the note and slide left so that the finger slides over the divide and continues on to the folder My Notes. This action triggers a 'move' operation. The note remains open on the screen, but behind the scene a stealth operation changed its location. Neat and simple. No clutter. Now is a good time to see what other files, this new document is sharing the folder with.
After the move operation, pinch the note to close. It is replaced by a list of files in that folder. Select any one file from the list to open it. No hassle. Now, one might like to reorder the files in the folder. For each list item, there is a title and on the same line to the right, there is an icon with three horizontal bars. To re-position a file in the list, hold this icon and drag the file to the desired location. What you can see between the title and the reorder icon is a row of icons that make things more interesting. The list of files may also be seen as thumbnails in a grid view - something that can accomplished as a toggle between the two views.
The row of icons provide such functionality as Open-in other apps, email the file, rename the file, delete the file and so on. Can it get simpler and more intuitive? The icons are designed to be self-explanatory - there can be no tooltips, because one cannot hover over an icon or a link on a touch device. The demise of hovering, however, is not that great a loss compared to the numerous benefits reaped from simple gesturing. A good app is equipped with a graphical help file to quickly bring the user up to speed with the app usage; gone also are the massive help pages and manuals for learning the operation of an application.
More interesting things happen on an open note. Note here - pun intended - that the words note, document and file are used interchangeably in this article. Let us therefore not split our hairs over semantics.
A slide from the right to left beginning from the rightmost end of the note opens a new note. No plus button again. It feels like turning a page in a physical notebook. All new notes are created in the same folder where the current note exists. As soon as the note is created, one can start typing because the user is presented with a keyboard as soon as the note is created. Now slide left to right and the left menu opens with the current folder highlighted. A number on the right of the folder indicates the number of files in the folder till date (when a file is deleted the counter is decremented). A slide on a folder prompts for deletion. A slide started from the leftmost position on the screen allows app-wide settings such as sort order (up and down arrows), font selection (font icon), feedback on the app, set feedback policy (auto shoot email to developer when app crashes) and so on. A slide in either direction navigates between notes in the same folder.
Let us now return to the note again. In order to view the note stats like word and character count, reading level etc., simply pull down from the top of the app. The notes background maybe set with a faintly visible ruled lines as default and allow the user to set from here. More export options may be provided at the bottom to be made visible only when the note is pulled up. What is more important for a writer is the features that the app provides while writing.
While the keyboard may be augmented by an additional row of keys on the keyboard, it is also very intuitive to use context menu, similar to the features offered in a desktop application where right mouse-click pops open an additional feature set. A long tap on the note could provide features such as formatting text (style, bullets, etc.), mark begin and end selection by taps, share selected text with social media apps without sacrificing the usual operations such as cut, copy & paste operations, define word, suggest word, spell-check etc.
Cursor movement is something that can be designed in ways that are very simple, yet effective in use. Leaving left and right margins provide ample space for cursor operations and page movement; at the same time, margins provide an elegant look to the note. The right margin can be used to provide page scroller, as already mentioned earlier. Tapping on the margin, left or right, will move the cursor by one letter accordingly. Long tap jumps the cursor by word. This mechanism also does not conflict with the in-built touch gestures provided by the device.
Search and replace functions are by far the most sought after features in a note-taking app on a tablet device. App-wide search box may be provided on top of the left menu. The result is a list of files containing the text; the display cuts across folder boundaries. No replace function is provided here - not necessary. On the level of a note, however, both search and replace functions can be provided. Long press on a note opens the context menu to launch the search interface. When the search word is clicked in the context menu, a search box is revealed over the virtual keyboard: it replaces the extended keys. Enter the search term and get a display of number of occurrences, which can be reached by left and right arrows on the search interface. A replace link appears on the search bar, clicking which provides the interface to replace word by word or all occurrences. A Done button dismisses the search interface. Cool, right?
Text selection can be used for other purposes too. Selected text may also be marked as a task with its own interface to set a reminder and so on. A note is written for several purposes - to record meeting points, to set an agenda for a meeting, to put down thoughts, to list items to do, for review, assign tasks to people, write an article, a long story and so on. With a few extra bells and whistles, the notes app can encompass the most comprehensive feature set ever to be found on a handheld device.
It is important to remember to provide defaults where possible so that the user may start using the app with default settings that are best suited to the eye and the look of the words on the page and its background. Even with a plethora of features such as outlined above, the note is still amenable to instant use without distractions, since all the features are hidden, but easily accessible. This will go a long way in enhancing the user experience on a touch device.
Take for example a simple notes application. Apart from music and pictures, taking notes is the most frequent use on an electronic device, be it a tablet or a PC. After booting up the PC, which takes a while depending on the type of system you have, we fire up the notes application from a short-cut if we have one, or select from a long list of applications from the Programs menu. Then you type some text using the large keyboard and watching the monitor at the same time. You need to save the document from time to time, for a power outage, a program or system crash may suddenly wipe out all your hard work in a trice.
The saving is a two-step process: when the save dialog box opens you type in a title for your note and then select a drive and a folder to save your note in. You must remember where you have saved your note if you must avoid the agony of a desperate search of the entire system. The save operation is performed by a series of mouse clicks. The click interface is the cornerstone of a windows-based computer.
Now, let us take a look at a notes application, called app for short, on a touch device. The important difference at the very outside between a PC and a tablet, for example, is a touch interface as opposed to a click interface. Even the keyboard is minimal, prompts for text completion, provides access to other less used keys in an intuitive way and can be hidden while scrolling the page. There is to begin with the text that one is typing and nothing else - everything else is out of the way. No toolbar icons, no need to keep saving during typing, windows and menu bars cluttering the screen - nothing, but you and your text. This is a major difference and one that every app on the handheld device must and some do exploit to the fullest possible degree to provide ease of use and aid in productivity.
A full charged battery on a handheld device lasts as long as eight to hours of working, which is more than any laptop is likely to provide. Saving can be done automatically as you type, so there is no threat of data loss. A good notes app will provide a feature that allows a user to start typing as soon as the app opens. Even the virtual keyboard is open and ready to receive input. This is a feature that most mobile note taking apps lack. Riding on the traditional PC bandwagon, some apps even go so far as to ask you to type in a title, select a folder to save it in and even expects the user to touch the save button! This is a legacy that is to be entirely eschewed in the design of a notes app on a mobile device.
A truly useful app starts up ready for typing, uses the first line as title, auto-saves the text as you type, saves the document in a folder such as Inbox (any name would do for that matter - general, root, default etc.) and allows to pour out your thoughts as though they were nuggets of divine utterances awaiting consecration. A touch device is meant to be fast and minimal in startup.
The question of saving to a desired folder may be addressed by the user using gestures. Again, it is important to remember that a touch is significantly different from a mouse click. Compared to a touch gesture, the closest a mouse gesture can come to is drag-and-drop. Gestures by touch on the other hand could be numerous and simple, very intuitive and eminently satisfying from a user experience point of view. When the user has finished typing s/he might want to place it in a certain folder. This can be accomplished using touch gestures in the following way.
After the text is drafted, slide the finger on the screen to right. A menu opens on the left with a list of folders previously created. It also shows the folder Inbox where the current document is saved. In order to create a new folder, simply pull the left menu down. A new folder is added to the list with its name box empty and a cursor positioned in it ready for typing. The name box could also have a default name such as New Folder selected and ready to be typed over or left as is. An 'x' button in the box is available to erase the name. This gesture is fluid, nutritive, minimal and simple to use. No plus button or extra windows with their own set of buttons. A long press on the newly created folder may open up a link to Dropbox. Now to move our note from the Inbox to the new folder, say, My Notes.
Place a finger on the note and slide left so that the finger slides over the divide and continues on to the folder My Notes. This action triggers a 'move' operation. The note remains open on the screen, but behind the scene a stealth operation changed its location. Neat and simple. No clutter. Now is a good time to see what other files, this new document is sharing the folder with.
After the move operation, pinch the note to close. It is replaced by a list of files in that folder. Select any one file from the list to open it. No hassle. Now, one might like to reorder the files in the folder. For each list item, there is a title and on the same line to the right, there is an icon with three horizontal bars. To re-position a file in the list, hold this icon and drag the file to the desired location. What you can see between the title and the reorder icon is a row of icons that make things more interesting. The list of files may also be seen as thumbnails in a grid view - something that can accomplished as a toggle between the two views.
The row of icons provide such functionality as Open-in other apps, email the file, rename the file, delete the file and so on. Can it get simpler and more intuitive? The icons are designed to be self-explanatory - there can be no tooltips, because one cannot hover over an icon or a link on a touch device. The demise of hovering, however, is not that great a loss compared to the numerous benefits reaped from simple gesturing. A good app is equipped with a graphical help file to quickly bring the user up to speed with the app usage; gone also are the massive help pages and manuals for learning the operation of an application.
More interesting things happen on an open note. Note here - pun intended - that the words note, document and file are used interchangeably in this article. Let us therefore not split our hairs over semantics.
A slide from the right to left beginning from the rightmost end of the note opens a new note. No plus button again. It feels like turning a page in a physical notebook. All new notes are created in the same folder where the current note exists. As soon as the note is created, one can start typing because the user is presented with a keyboard as soon as the note is created. Now slide left to right and the left menu opens with the current folder highlighted. A number on the right of the folder indicates the number of files in the folder till date (when a file is deleted the counter is decremented). A slide on a folder prompts for deletion. A slide started from the leftmost position on the screen allows app-wide settings such as sort order (up and down arrows), font selection (font icon), feedback on the app, set feedback policy (auto shoot email to developer when app crashes) and so on. A slide in either direction navigates between notes in the same folder.
Let us now return to the note again. In order to view the note stats like word and character count, reading level etc., simply pull down from the top of the app. The notes background maybe set with a faintly visible ruled lines as default and allow the user to set from here. More export options may be provided at the bottom to be made visible only when the note is pulled up. What is more important for a writer is the features that the app provides while writing.
While the keyboard may be augmented by an additional row of keys on the keyboard, it is also very intuitive to use context menu, similar to the features offered in a desktop application where right mouse-click pops open an additional feature set. A long tap on the note could provide features such as formatting text (style, bullets, etc.), mark begin and end selection by taps, share selected text with social media apps without sacrificing the usual operations such as cut, copy & paste operations, define word, suggest word, spell-check etc.
Cursor movement is something that can be designed in ways that are very simple, yet effective in use. Leaving left and right margins provide ample space for cursor operations and page movement; at the same time, margins provide an elegant look to the note. The right margin can be used to provide page scroller, as already mentioned earlier. Tapping on the margin, left or right, will move the cursor by one letter accordingly. Long tap jumps the cursor by word. This mechanism also does not conflict with the in-built touch gestures provided by the device.
Search and replace functions are by far the most sought after features in a note-taking app on a tablet device. App-wide search box may be provided on top of the left menu. The result is a list of files containing the text; the display cuts across folder boundaries. No replace function is provided here - not necessary. On the level of a note, however, both search and replace functions can be provided. Long press on a note opens the context menu to launch the search interface. When the search word is clicked in the context menu, a search box is revealed over the virtual keyboard: it replaces the extended keys. Enter the search term and get a display of number of occurrences, which can be reached by left and right arrows on the search interface. A replace link appears on the search bar, clicking which provides the interface to replace word by word or all occurrences. A Done button dismisses the search interface. Cool, right?
Text selection can be used for other purposes too. Selected text may also be marked as a task with its own interface to set a reminder and so on. A note is written for several purposes - to record meeting points, to set an agenda for a meeting, to put down thoughts, to list items to do, for review, assign tasks to people, write an article, a long story and so on. With a few extra bells and whistles, the notes app can encompass the most comprehensive feature set ever to be found on a handheld device.
It is important to remember to provide defaults where possible so that the user may start using the app with default settings that are best suited to the eye and the look of the words on the page and its background. Even with a plethora of features such as outlined above, the note is still amenable to instant use without distractions, since all the features are hidden, but easily accessible. This will go a long way in enhancing the user experience on a touch device.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Learning
I just wondered why not teach just science as it relates to everyday objects and teach only math in so far as it is relevant to teaching science. Take objects from everyday life and teach depending on the receptivity of the brain. Math is only a tool for measurement. Science is the study of objects in the world, their properties and behavior.
Physical science differs from life science with respect to one essential difference: life science deals entirely with living things - plant, animal and human beings. Physical science deals with the inanimate objects of the world. Mathematics is independent of matter, animate or inanimate.
Math is not a subject at all in the sense that it is entirely abstract. To learn, it is important to deal with something that it is perceived by the senses, something tangible and therefore it can be related to the subject matter directly. At least, until the student finishes school, it is important to keep things this way. The abstract can wait until a speciality is chosen for further studies. It is important to lay the foundation on specifics, before going deeper into the general and abstract nature of things.
In learning, matter and its measurement is what we are concerned with: that is the objective of all study. Why learn measurement independently of matter as a subject in itself. It can wait until it is taken up as a specialized study in abstraction. Learn measurement in school in so far as it applies to the objects we are dealing with in our study of science.
This way of teaching is done at a very early age in education; however, this is discarded very soon afterwards and the notion of subjects is introduced. The student then crams too many things in the mind without having any clue whatsoever as to its application in real world. Everything is abstract. There is no relation to the objects in the world. Most of what is crammed remains unused almost throughout the life. It also becomes very difficult for the child to figure out what is best suited to his or her temperament and skill.
Physical science differs from life science with respect to one essential difference: life science deals entirely with living things - plant, animal and human beings. Physical science deals with the inanimate objects of the world. Mathematics is independent of matter, animate or inanimate.
Math is not a subject at all in the sense that it is entirely abstract. To learn, it is important to deal with something that it is perceived by the senses, something tangible and therefore it can be related to the subject matter directly. At least, until the student finishes school, it is important to keep things this way. The abstract can wait until a speciality is chosen for further studies. It is important to lay the foundation on specifics, before going deeper into the general and abstract nature of things.
In learning, matter and its measurement is what we are concerned with: that is the objective of all study. Why learn measurement independently of matter as a subject in itself. It can wait until it is taken up as a specialized study in abstraction. Learn measurement in school in so far as it applies to the objects we are dealing with in our study of science.
This way of teaching is done at a very early age in education; however, this is discarded very soon afterwards and the notion of subjects is introduced. The student then crams too many things in the mind without having any clue whatsoever as to its application in real world. Everything is abstract. There is no relation to the objects in the world. Most of what is crammed remains unused almost throughout the life. It also becomes very difficult for the child to figure out what is best suited to his or her temperament and skill.
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