With the release of version 2.2, Nebo became the first and only note-taking app that lets you mix handwriting with typed text, treating them equally. How did we, a handwriting recognition company, arrive at this point, and why did we decide to solve the need for keyboard support differently?
The beginning
Many years ago when I arrived at MyScript, there was a dream to let the world create and manage content through digital ink. Primarily because handwriting is an intuitive input method: When you learn to write, you start with a pen in your hand.
It seemed obvious: Digital devices were becoming mainstream so we needed to integrate handwriting in them. But was it really as natural as on paper?
We started researching literature and usability testing our showcase apps. What drove people to handwrite? How useful were our showcase apps in our users’ daily lives? What we saw was encouraging:
A. Digital handwriting remains natural and brings advantages that cannot be replaced by other tools, like improved memorization and visualization of concepts.
B. Users loved not having to rewrite their notes anymore.
Combining intuitiveness with productivity was a potential game changer. However, there were many drop-offs along our users’ journeys that we needed to work on.
While the days of writing legibly or learning the Graffiti language for the Palm were over, writing on digital devices remained different than on paper. Productivity gains needed to be offset against, for instance, dealing with multiple factors affecting recognition accuracy. As the hardware wasn’t very precise and responsive, the comfort of writing was not comparable yet either. We learned that for users to really embrace digital writing, they needed more than what they had on paper.
We needed to bridge the gap to the digital world and integrate it into the daily workflows in the digital age, where apps are connected, documents are shared digitally and certain formats have become a standard in the workplace.
Research, experiment, repeat
We intensified the research and started to interview people with many backgrounds to understand how they used handwriting in their daily life. What made them start a handwritten note, what kind of frustrations did they encounter with their notes, and what did they do with their notes afterwards?
With more understanding, more questions arrived.
We started analyzing more deeply through app analytics, studying notes that people took and shared with us, organizing surveys in which thousands of users participated. We added support and store reviews, further refining and strengthening the analysis that was done before.
This massive data set allowed us to clearly define the audience that would benefit most from digital ink. We were able to create a set of personas for which we mapped out the journeys they went through each week.
Meanwhile, we experimented with our showcase apps to see what worked and didn’t work. We tried different interaction models from Memo and Notes Mobile to Smart Note, learning along the way through paper prototypes, guerrilla usability tests and longitudinal (diary) studies.
The picture became clearer and clearer.
We sat down with the MyScript AI team to map out the road ahead of us. Which objectives could be achieved by our AI engine in the short term, which ones could we only achieve in the long term? How could we overcome the more complex AI challenges through the user interface (UI) in the meantime?
Could we solve things differently by creating a better note-taker instead of just adding more features?
Based on the data gathered through user and design research, the work done with the smart people from the AI team and the strategy gurus from Product Management, we defined the Minimum Viable Experience (MVE) for Nebo.
Nebo
Nebo was the first MyScript app focusing on more than handwriting recognition, and MyScript Interactive Ink was born from it. Interactive ink was the real innovation, bringing you productivity by treating handwriting as if it were typed text and adding a layer of interactivity on top of it.
Content created was immediately available for re-use in a digital workflow, faster than through OCR (text recognition on bitmaps/photos). Handwriting was sped up by refining gestures used in the past and making them simpler and easier to learn. But we did not only focus on the handwriting and re-using it. We knew that while writing, you also need to restructure content so we added layout and formatting tools. We also knew you need to correct text often (mistakes made when writing quickly, the occasional recognition hiccup), so we made correcting handwritten text easier.
When we finally launched our third note-taking app with this totally new interaction model, we felt confident we found the right approach this time. This one was here to stay. Even if we knew we still had to keep improving the experience.
Pen and… keyboard?!
One of the drop-offs we found was the lack of a keyboard in Nebo. We could clearly see that depending on the context, you needed a keyboard in your handwritten notes. As MyScript was historically purely focused on handwriting recognition, it was challenging to convince everyone that it would be a natural fit. But for UX, it was obvious: Interactive ink already treats handwritten text as typed text.
However, we wanted to take a step further and not just let you type text in a box, but type in any handwritten text too. This way, there is no worry to add a special character with the keyboard, draw that check mark with a pen or continue writing that handwritten paragraph with your keyboard when arriving back at your desk. The gestures users have become so accustomed to would have to seamlessly work on typed text as well. In addition to the possibility to add or edit any text with a keyboard, a cursor needed to be introduced to let you select text in a more fine-grained way (and soon paste external content). And of course, that content should be editable with gestures and should be mixable with handwriting.
Thanks to the strong collaboration with the AI and development teams, as a company we overcame many challenges that came with putting the keyboard and the pen at the same level.
We are now another step closer to integrate the intuitiveness of handwriting in digital devices and workflows.
We are making you more productive than with paper in the process… and this is not all!
Further improving our understanding
We also took this opportunity to get ever closer to our users by introducing an Insider program. For the first time, we’re rolling out a new feature as a beta to get early feedback and refine the experience further. More features will be arriving as beta features in the months to come.
So if you feel a little adventurous, become a Tester by going to Nebo settings > Insider program, turn on that Keyboard beta and let our Support team know whether it has bugs or caused frustrations for you, or share your love with us on @MyScriptApps or Facebook.
For even more adventure, become an Insider by joining our user panel to receive invitations for surveys, usability tests and other types of research by telling us more about you or by simply checking the box for “Help improve MyScript products”.
A big thank you to all users who have already shared their feedback with us in the past. We hope you’re enjoying this journey with us — we couldn’t have done it without you!
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More information on MyScript Interactive Ink.
Discover the applications using MyScript Interactive Ink (Nebo, Calculator).
