The Palmpilot

The Palmpilot

THE PALMPILOT Background and Information The PalmPilot was an early, successful example of a handheld, mobile computing device in the 1990s. Also known as a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). It allowed people to keep track of their appointments and contacts and take notes using handwriting recognition software. The PalmPilot was carefully designed to meet user needs—if it did not, it would not have been all that useful or popular. Other handhelds had tried and failed on the market already. It was designed to connect easily with a user’s home computer—most users of PalmPilots also had desktop computers that they did much of their work on. Palm was successful as an accessory to the PC, not as its replacement. People interacted with the PalmPilot using a stylus, a pen they could use to write and select features. No keyboard or touchscreen, just the pen. During the prototyping process, engineers thought through how people would use it, how many steps would it take to get to different features, was it easy to use for notetaking, etc. Several prototypes were created: • Wooden prototype: Used by Jeff Hawkins, who pretended to take notes in meetings. • “Tethered prototype”: Let engineers develop software for the PalmPilot before the production units were available. • Keyboard-based model: Unsure if the stylus would be popular, PalmPilot engineers tested this version as well. The PalmPilot also had handwriting recognition software. To improve accuracy, Palm engineers created a simplified alphabet called Graffiti that users had to learn. The new alphabet frustrated some users, but really caught on for others. .

View Full Text

Details

  • File Type
    pdf
  • Upload Time
    -
  • Content Languages
    English
  • Upload User
    Anonymous/Not logged-in
  • File Pages
    1 Page
  • File Size
    -

Download

Channel Download Status
Express Download Enable

Copyright

We respect the copyrights and intellectual property rights of all users. All uploaded documents are either original works of the uploader or authorized works of the rightful owners.

  • Not to be reproduced or distributed without explicit permission.
  • Not used for commercial purposes outside of approved use cases.
  • Not used to infringe on the rights of the original creators.
  • If you believe any content infringes your copyright, please contact us immediately.

Support

For help with questions, suggestions, or problems, please contact us