December 05, 2004
Designing for refrigerator moments
Lora relayed these three MSN messages to me last night. They came from Julie Lerman. Well, not quite. Julie was showing her Tablet PC to some friends and eager, seven-year old Alexa wanted to share her enthusiasm for MathPractice. So she inked these messages to Lora.
How cute. Cute enough that I printed them out and put them on my refrigerator.
It then struck me: With ink in Messenger I imagine there are many moments like this that are refrigerator worthy. I know MSN Messenger is filling its codebase with gobs of kid-friendly doodads, but what remote parent or grandparent wouldn't want this?
It's interesting. When I think of this type of interaction it changes the way I see Messenger. I see Skype-quality-it-just-works webcam and VOIP support merged with real ink-based whiteboarding. Kids could use the app to play paper or electronic games--much like in the way Messenger is going--but it makes the program so different. Typing messages isn't the key. Interacting is. I don't mean the user-interface kind. I mean human interaction. That's what it's all about.
Imagine a five-year old drawing pictures for their relatives all day long. They draw and instantly pass their artwork to their aunt, their mother, their grandparent. And what about a transparent remote archive that saves everything so twenty years later you can page through them and laugh and chuckle and smile? Just like people do now.
All of this is what might motivate someone to buy a Tablet for their child or grandchild.
Hmmm. This all reminds me how some things that are so similar are actually so different.
Loren,
How wonderful to see our granddaughter Alexa's comments on your program on your blog. Julie Lerman sent it to us. She also sent me information on your other program for engineers. I passed it on to one of our EE professors here at the University of Vermont who thought it was terrific. What great ideas!