Written by Most of my book I’ve been writing I have written on my iPad. On the order of 10 to 1 in terms of pages so far. I’ve been thinking about why that is? I certainly don’t type faster on it, I actually have to pace my speed because it can’t keep up with me, I get a full two key strokes ahead at full speed and it starts skipping characters, hopefully the iPad 3 won’t have that issue.
There is something well beyond the geek factor, that would have worn off around 10k words. I find it to be a very personal space, and I realize how much I appreciate not having any interruptions forced on me. There is no visible key that I have a new email in, there is no text messages that show up unless I want them to, there’s nothing. Peace, quiet, I get in the ‘zone’ of high creativity and productivity and I stay there. It is immensely enjoyable.
It reminds me a lot of my Basic programming days, where I would literally get up in the morning, code code, eat lunch, code code WHAT it’s dark out? Huh. I would be in the zone, playing with ideas, moving code around in my teenage head, and utterly content. I wouldn’t think of words or code, it was blocks of concepts that I would fit together.
Currently I’m using Pages, on both my Mac and iPad, and I’m using iCloud. While I’m not truly happy with Pages as there are things that I am so used to Microsoft Word doing that it doesn’t seem to do that are frustrating (such as defining what the followup style should be after another style, like after H1 it should use something else I want) it does the job gracefully. Pages on the Mac needs to be automatically plugged into iCloud, but I’m sure that’s coming. The thing is, even with Pages on my Mac, it’s just not the same as on my iPad.
The solitude is key, and the natural interaction with the media is the secret. I don’t think about “now I have to move the mouse” on any level, I just touch, I touch everything. I scroll with a touch, I write with a touch, I move ideas (paragraphs) around with touches, it’s all as close to naturally as we have right now.
Now this is the point of Natural User Interfaces, to be as natural as possible, but I’ve been thinking about Kinetic as it readies to be released for Windows and we will start having Kinetic Windows all over the place. The thing is with that, that it is very likely going to continue to have me separate from what I’m working on, and I don’t see how it will improve anything like the writing experience.
I’ve come to realize that the influence of a technology has to really start with the simple, because at the end of the day it is the simple, basic things that we return to naturally. Not in a negative way, in an intuitive way. How many bookkeepers wipe out Excel so that they can do a bulk entry into the accounting software, instead of doing item by item in the accounting software? Lots that I know. Why? Time and intuitiveness.
For me I find that the other key part of the magic for writing on the iPad is being able to flip from a favorite book and descend into writing or the other way around. The idea of switching my mode without, again, unnatural interference.
This may sound obvious on a couple of levels, but I see this as being all the more important when helping customers. I stress user experience but most people draw the spectrum at the wrong place, the draw it between effectively let the developers decide to getting some creative people involved. Instead the spectrum is a lot wider, and I know at least one company that has engaged in a multi-million dollar project to revamp their interface because of the loss of productivity it caused.
The key for any application is the ability to envolve the user in a feeling of trust, comfort and intuitiveness. Allow the user to be able to experiment and try without devastating consequences. The idea of not spending money on corporate app UIs is over, some VPs just have realized that they could get fired over it yet.
There are a lot of lessons I’ve picked up writing the book so far, and with my goal of finishing it, I’m sure there are more to come.
