Android Apps for Working Smart ATIA Webinar Narrative SLIDE # 1. Welcome to today’s webinar entitled, “Productivity Is the Name of the Game: Android Apps for Working Smart.” My name is Darren Gabbert, and I am a Senior Business Operations Associate at the University of Missouri’s flagship campus in Columbia, Missouri.

2. According to We Are Social and Hootsuite’s Digital in 2017 Global Overview, more than half the world’s population now uses a smartphone. That is over 3.5 billion people that are smartphone users. And there are all kinds of (somewhat frightening) projections of how many hours a day are spent using these devices.

What I want to talk about today is how we can use our smartphones in meaningful and productive ways. To some extent, meaningful is going to vary from person to person. But efficiency and productivity is often achieved through some basic common principals. We are specifically looking at Android devices today. And the apps we are going to look at will address some basic principles of mobile device productivity; productivity in terms of producing, searching, reading and conveying digital information.

3. Learning Objectives a. We have 4 learning objectives that we want to accomplish today. First, we will learn how to save and retrieve information via Simplenote and Chomp SMS. Second, we will learn a strategy for efficient use of abbreviation expansion using Texpand Pro. We will gain the knowledge to create, manage and synchronize a personal digital library using Calibre Library and Calibre Companion. And lastly, we will be able to identify three automated tasks which demonstrate the power of using Tasker. b. And, I have no financial or non-financial relationships to disclose. 4. Who is Darren? a. Before we go any further, let me tell you a bit about the chap that is talking to you right now. I have an advanced form of Muscular Dystrophy, and for the past four and a half years, I have been ventilator dependent. Because of a tracheotomy, I am unable to speak. Therefore you are hearing today’s narrative as synthesized text-to-speech. I am with you live, and will be active in the chat box throughout the course of our webinar this afternoon. b. I have a BS in Computer Science. By the end of the webinar, you will know what the BS actually stands for. I have worked for the University of Missouri’s Division of Information Technology for 28 years, providing assistive technology services. And for the past 9 years, I have had a very active collaboration with the School of Engineering where we have a great group of graduate students doing research in Robotic Assistive Technology. I am accessing my desktop workstation via single switch scanning. I use Words+ EZ Keys on a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with dual 19” displays. I will give you a quick look at this on my screen…. {cut to showing EZ Keys SideTalk} i. This is EZ Keys Side Talk. I am choosing letters by twitching my cheek in front of an infrared sensor. Scanning rate is 100 milliseconds; that is kind of fast. Typing rate is at best 10 words per minute; that is kind of slow. I am cheating right now with abbreviation expansion. Let’s go back to the PowerPoint presentation. c. The point I want to underscore is that I know how important it is to work productively. I get a huge return on any effort I put toward working smart and saving keystrokes. Today I will be sharing what I have learned about productivity and working smart on the Android platform. 5. Productivity for me a. Let’s start by giving some context to the idea of productivity. What makes productivity meaningful? I use EMG single-switch technology to access my Galaxy S8+ smartphone. My device provides my primary alternative communication through an app called Speech Assistant. I am a power user of my Droid. So much so that my wife refers to my device as the other woman. Naming my S8 Monica didn’t help my cause any. For me, meaningful productivity involves keystroke savings for communicating, efficient management of textual information, and automation of repetitive tasks. 6. Productivity for you a. First, your smartphone needs to help you do what you actually want or need to do. I very much enjoy asking people, “Why do you have a smartphone?” And there is always this pause, and a somewhat annoyed expression, before the answer comes back. And often the answer includes texting, social media, navigation and taking photos. All good things, but a smartphone can do these things and much, much more. So we need to put some thought into how this “much, much more” can be meaningful to our everyday activities. b. Secondly, your smartphone should help you do things faster. There are some things that I could do on my smartphone that I choose to avoid doing. For example, composing lengthy email notes is much faster with my desktop workstation. Likewise, most users are faster at text entry on a full-size keyboard. Mobile speech recognition is really good, but it isn’t always suitable to your environment. So productivity often means doing things faster. c. Productivity should also involve making things easier. If I am out-of-pocket and I need to Google something very specific, my smartphone can (and often does) make me look pretty smart. What you lack in the noodle, you can find with Google! But if I am browsing and researching a more general topic, my dual 19 inch displays are where I want to be. d. Meaningful productivity involves doing tasks that are relevant, doing those tasks faster, and making those tasks easier. There is one more factor that I think is worth mentioning, and that involves availability on multiple platforms. If I have an app that seamlessly synchronizes data between my Android smartphone, my Apple iPad, and my Microsoft Surface Pro 3, I then can quickly and easily switch between them. Thus, I am freer to choose what device is best suited to the task at hand. 7. Simplenote a. The first app we are going to look at is called Simplenote. Simplenote allows you to create, organize, and search digital notes. It also automatically synchronizes your notes on all your devices. So what is productive about digital notes? I have a 19-year-old son. And if I ask him if he remembers some important piece of information, he will inevitably say, “Yeah, Dad, I wrote it down somewhere.” That translates into, “No, Dad, it’s gone forever.” Note taking is a waste of time if you can’t retrieve the information when you need it. b. With that in mind, let’s look at Simplenote’s key features. Simplenote is true to its name with an uncluttered, clean interface. You can simply tap the add note button, type the first line which will be the title of the note, and type the rest as the body of the note. And, of course, the value of the note needs to exceed the effort to type it. I think this easily does. i. ACTION: Type “Mother Teresa” on title line ii. ACTION: Type “Do small things with great love” as content of note 8. Simplenote (continued) a. Simplenote’s productivity power lies in using its search and share capabilities To demonstrate the value of search and share, we will consider a collection of quotes that have been saved in Simplenote. I have a number of authors that I distinguish as my best friends. And I collect, and often share, from their words of wisdom. b. A much more favorable method than typing is to select text and share to Simplenote. Here you see I have selected some text from my collection of Martin Luther King Jr. speeches. This screenshot is of the reader app FBReader. And upon selecting text, the context menu appears, and we can choose to share. Select Simplenote. It creates a new note, using the document title within the note title, with the selected text copied. We can see that it has been added to the collection of notes. And the back button will return me to the company of my friend. 9. Simplenote (continued) a. Now I want to share a quote with someone. And I don’t remember the author’s name. I just know it has the word “battle” in it. So I do a search for “battle.” And the search results show the title and first two lines of notes containing the word “battle.” And that is enough to tickle my brain and remember it was our friend Plato that I was thinking about. I can then tap the share button from within Simplenote, choose my SMS app, specify the recipient, and send. 10. Simplenote (continued) a. Another productivity enhancing feature of Simplenote is its ability to synchronize across all your devices. I can access my collection of notes from my Android Galaxy S8+, my Windows Surface Pro 3, my Apple iPad, or from any workstation using the web app. Each is seamlessly updated with any changes as they are made from any of the devices. So in this example, it means I can always add, search and share from my collection of quotes. 11. Simplenote (continued) a. Lastly, if your notes are meaningful, back them up. The web app offers a backup to zip file. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! 12. Chomp SMS v7.17 a. I want us to take a look now at some similar productivity features, as they relate to SMS (Short Messaging Service). According to Portio Research company, 8.3 trillion text messages will be sent worldwide in just this year alone. That is nearly 23 billion messages per day. Or almost 16 million messages every minute! And that is just SMS. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger combine with over 60 billion messages sent every day. There is some data suggesting the average adult user spends 23 hours a week engaged in online messaging. One key to productivity might be to stop texting! However, one can argue that texting is a very time efficient method of communication. So in that light, let’s consider how we can maximize the benefits of text messaging. 13. Chomp SMS (continued) a. I want us to look at an app called Chomp SMS. This is a text messaging app that offers strong search capabilities and many customization features. Key features include a simple and clean interface which is always a plus. But, much like Simplenote, its productivity power lies in its strong searching capabilities. I keep all my text messages. I recently restored my SMS backup on my new phone. It was 89 thousand text messages over a period of 3 years. That is a lot of digital information. And digital information, is searchable information. b. If I search my text messages for the word “address,” I see text messages that include me asking for addresses. And if I remember the street name (Barns), the results are narrowed. This separates Chomp from the other guys. Their search system treats each word you type as a search term, instead of treating all the words as a single search string. So in this case, the word “address” and the word “Barnes” do not have to be side by side to be a find. c. In addition to superior searching capabilities, Chomp offers the ability to pin conversations to the top of the conversations list -- very important not to pin anyone above your spouse; trust me). Chomp’s quick reply is very efficient, allowing you to reply to a text and automatically return to the previously active app. And scheduled text messaging is even better than setting reminders for yourself. I am rather amazed at how many people think I am there secretary. “I can do that,” they will say, “but you might remind me the night before.” So I type a text on the spot, schedule delivery for the appropriate future date, and pretty much perpetuate the idea that I am their secretary. d. And one last feature that I want to mention is speak text. This is especially handy for me as an AAC user. So if I want to share a text message with someone in my immediate company, I can simply have it spoken aloud. 14. Speech recognition a. Search and share are two fundamental computing capabilities that you should always be ready to exploit. But there will always exist the inevitable need to type text. But before we talk about smartphone keyboard productivity, I want to touch on mobile speech-to-text. Speech recognition is legitimately amazing, and definitely can provide productive text entry in many circumstances. In fact, let’s poll our participants this afternoon about your experience with smartphone speech recognition. b. One question will be: Do you use speech recognition on your smartphone on a daily basis? You can answer: Yes, on Android; or Yes, on iOS; or Yes, on other; or No, not on a daily basis. c. And we will follow that question up, to those of you that do use smartphone speech recognition on a daily basis: do you dictate text messages using speech recognition? Not just commands and web searches, but actually dictating text. And to those who do not use smartphone speech recognition on a daily basis: Why not? You can answer: Poor recognition accuracy; or Self-conscious of speaking in front of others; or Never really tried it; or Other. We are going to watch a short video clip, and then post the questions for you to answer 15. Speech recognition (continued) a. Today we are going to focus more on productive key entry. But mobile speech-to-text has its place, and is only going to improve in the days ahead. I will leave you, though, with one speech recognition tip worth noting. Your Android system has a personal dictionary that many people don’t know about. We can go to settings, General management, Language and input, and Personal dictionary. Any words that are repeatedly misrecognized, can be added to your personal dictionary. This should significantly improve speech recognition of those words that are uniquely you. This is good to remember if you live in Mahtomedi, Minnesota or something. 16. Texpand Pro a. If we are looking for productivity and efficiency with regard to mobile device text entry, then it is good to talk about an app called Texpand Pro. Texpand Pro is a text expansion app that assigns shortcuts to frequently used words and phrases. I put together a video so you can see Texpand Pro in action. b. Play Texpand Pro demo video i. This is Monica, my beloved Galaxy S8+. ii. And this is my Speech Assistant app, which I use as my primary AAC device. 1. ACTION: Expands “np” into “no problem” iii. I am not a big fan of text shorthand. And yet, it is all about efficiency. Texpand lets me use text shorthand, and at the same time pacify my OCD over using proper English. Abbreviations automatically expand following a space or punctuation. 1. ACTION: Expands “idk” into “I don’t know” iv. This one saves me a lot of keystrokes every day. 1. ACTION: Expands “ywr” into “Yes dear, you were right” v. Texpand Pro is especially helpful for typing addresses, phone numbers, and other personal data. 1. ACTION: Types “You can mail it to” and expands “hwydl” into “10198 Highway D, Versailles, Missouri 65084” vi. So let’s make a shortcut. 1. ACTION: Go to Texpand Pro home screen and tap Add phrase button vii. Adding a phrase can be as easy as typing the shortcut and the phrase. 1. ACTION: Type “ttyl” as shortcut, and type “”Talk to you later” as phrase viii. You might notice that my abbreviations pop up on the word prediction list. I am typing them out for our demo, but the prediction list increases efficacy further. ix. And I will tell it to expand immediately after a space or punctuation. 1. ACTION: Bring up options menu, and tap Expands immediately x. And we can go to Chomp SMS, and give it a go! 1. ACTION: Go to a conversation in Chomp SMS, expand “ttyl” into “Talk to you later,” and send text message c. As you saw, Texpand Pro has a simple and clean interface. We can set how the expansion gets triggered. And I will mention that Texpand also offers a suggestion window for shortcuts that start with the same letters. Tapping the orange menu button will pop up the menu. This can be very helpful for remembering abbreviations, but Texpand Pro’s productivity power lies in having a systematic approach to building a collection of shortcuts that are meaningful. d. You can also specify specific apps where you prefer Texpand not to be active. And of course, as your collection of shortcuts grow, you want to regularly make a backup. 17. Calibre a. I want to talk a little bit about ebooks. Not audio books, but rather digital text that one can read from a desktop computer or a mobile device. And, like I have been emphasizing, digital information is searchable information. And search and share capabilities greatly support productivity. But we cannot overlook the need to manage personal digital libraries. Our Adaptive Computing Technology Center at MU provides accessible digital information to students with disabilities. It involves a lot of high speed scanning and OCR. And by the time a student is a Senior, or entering graduate school, you can imagine that their personal digital library gets fairly large. b. As we think about efficiency and productivity, we have to ask some questions: Where are these digital books being stored? On what devices are these digital books being accessed? How can I find the digital information I need when I need it? Calibre gives us some good answers to these questions. 18. Calibre (continued) a. Calibre is a comprehensive ebook manager for adding, organizing and backing up large digital collections on your Windows, Mac OS, or Linux workstation. Calibre Companion is a mobile device app for managing and accessing your digital library. 19. Calibre (continued) a. This is Calibre for Windows, as installed on my Surface Pro 3. It is displaying all 278 ebooks in my personal digital library. I have defined two virtual libraries. Clicking the journal articles tab will filter out everything except digital research articles that I have added to my library. Now I want to find, within these 60 articles, research I have collected pertaining to robotics. And within these, I only wish to see publications with Yanco listed as a contributing author. b. And when research articles get too dull, I can go hang out with my best friends. And can use the tag browser to see author names. and see what Tolstoy has to offer. My point is to convey how easy Calibre makes it to organize large digital collections and find what you are looking for. You can also add books that you have already acquired, you can get books from the internet, you can remove books, you can edit metadata, and Calibre has its own ebook viewer, if you choose. 20. Calibre (continued) a. And all this organizational power can seamlessly synchronize with your mobile device. I can look at authors, choose George Morrison, and if I select a book, I can see its metadata, and tap read to go to my default ebook reader, which right now is FB Reader Premium. 21. Calibre (continued) a. To summarize, let’s outline Calibre’s key features. First, Calibre Library is a desktop/tablet program that runs in Windows, Mac OS, or Linux operating systems. It can add and convert digital files to your personal digital library. It allows editing of metadata. It has powerful sort, search, and tag capabilities. With Calibre you can view, bookmark, and search within any ebook. Best of all, you can synchronize all or part of your personal digital library with Calibre Companion which is an app on your mobile device. b. Thus, on your device you can view ebook metadata, sort and search your library, and open ebooks to whatever reader app you prefer. Calibre is very powerful, customizable and free. 22. Tasker a. Tasker is a task automation program which performs actions based on context. And by context I mean what state your mobile device is in, or what events are occurring, or what app is active. And context can also include your location, as recognized by your GPS. Unlike the other apps we have looked at, Tasker does not necessarily have a simple interface. In fact, there is a moderate learning curve to address before you really discover the power of Tasker. What I want us to focus on right now is what type of things can be accomplished with Tasker. b. So we are going to get acquainted with Tasker by looking at some examples of automated tasks. I have two examples of location based automation. First, I have a profile that will turn on my device WiFi when my location is at home. Here you see where an address search yielded my home GPS coordinates. So when I am within 200 meters of home, the profile will run an enter task which, in this case, is simply to turn WiFi on. And when I leave home, the profile will run the exit task which is to turn WiFi off. 23. Tasker (continued) a. My second example of location based automation follows the same line, but the action involves changing sound volume. When I get near the location of my Church, Tasker will set my device’s system volume, notification volume, and ringer volume all to silent. Leaving the media volume unchanged for my AAC. Location based tasks really go a step beyond reminders, and make your smartphone smart. What you see here is a partial list of action categories. And this is a list of actions within the media category alone. Tasker offers over 200 actions, grouped within 21 categories. So you can imagine the reach of capabilities. b. The next example demonstrates triggering a task when a state context becomes active. And in this case, the context is in regard to a power disconnect. My S8 draws power from a USB port on my power wheelchair. And I want Tasker to alert me, if the cable comes loose. So I created a profile based on the state of my power connection. And these are all possible power sources that Tasker can monitor. I chose “Any” to include all possible power sources. And then checked “Invert” to indicate the state of Not Any power source. And when that state is true, Tasker will play a notify sound. 24. Tasker (continued) a. There are many productivity enhancements to be found in these automatic actions that occur when specific conditions are met. But Tasker can go further. Our fourth example involves creating shortcuts to control media volume. Changing volume is a relatively frequent thing to do for an AAC user like myself. And the physical volume buttons are inaccessible to me. Thus, I created two tasks: one to incrementally increase media volume, and the other to decrease media volume. And these tasks can be triggered from two shortcuts on my home screen. 25. Tasker (continued) a. Our last Tasker example shows how elaborate Tasker can get. Scenes are essentially custom user interfaces which can include buttons, menus, sliders, and more. So I created a dialogue window called MySounds. AAC users are always at risk for sounding dull. This little interface is my defense against such a fate. If my wife says something like, “We should go visit your sister.” I could say, “No.” Or, I can bring up MySounds and really express my feelings on the matter. b. {Boooo! Sound} c. Preparing for this webinar sometimes made me tap this one. d. {head shake confused sound} e. And a long tap can speak a phrase. For example, “I hate it when that happens.” This one is great for picnics. f. {Burp sound} g. And long tap: “Excuse me!” You all might be ready to tap this one. {Yawn sound} h. I think you got the idea. 26. What did we learn? a. So what did we learn about productivity? We began with an app called Simplenote for making notes on your smartphone. We demonstrated how we can automatically create a note by selecting text and sharing to Simplenote. And how we can search and share notes from Simplenote to other apps. And how our notes are synchronized across Windows, Android, Apple, and Web platforms. b. Similarly, we made note of the robust searching capabilities of Chomp SMS. That is in addition to it having important features such as pinning conversations to the top of the conversations list, quick reply dialogue window, scheduled texting, and an option to speak messages. c. We touched on mobile speech-to-text, and recognized its strengths and weaknesses. And I gave you a tip about improving recognition accuracy by adding troublesome words to your mobile device’s personal dictionary. 27. What did we learn? (continued) a. You watched the video demonstrating Texpand Pro’s abbreviation expansion for efficient text entry. It is most efficient to have abbreviations expand immediately after a space or punctuation, but there is also a dynamic suggestion window to help remember abbreviations. Productivity with Texpand Pro depends heavily on creating meaningful shortcuts. b. We looked at how we can manage a digital library using Calibre Library and Calibre Companion. Calibre Library runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux workstations, and can add, convert, organize and otherwise manage digital collections. Calibre Companion is the mobile app that is available on Android or iOS. Calibre Companion synchronizes with Calibre Library, and allows you to sort and search and otherwise access your digital collections. c. And lastly we sampled Tasker’s productivity possibilities by looking at two examples of location based task automation. One where my Wifi is turned on when I come home and is turned off when I leave home, and the other turning my phone to silent mode when I arrive at Church. We considered an example of state based automation where a notification sound is played when a power disconnect happens. We looked at how actions, specifically media volume up and down, can be triggered from home screen shortcuts. And, we mustn’t forget my questionably productive interface of my sounds that I created with Tasker. Tasker can do much more. If you need to streamline a process or find a workaround on an Android device, Tasker is the tool you want. 28. Conclusion a. I want to thank you for your attention this afternoon. And I hope you find these apps to be useful. You can download a summary of the apps discussed from the Adobe Connect handouts pod. I will answer what questions I can in the chat pod, but please feel free to email me anytime at [email protected]. Thank you!