Thanks for writing about your experiences. Its a weak spot for most of us, and it was a refreshing kick in the butt, to get ourselves in gear about this topic which has been on our mind for a long time.
Its great to see more startup support in this weak area. I really hope replicated/gravitational succeed, and perhaps more articles can be written to help the rest of us reduce the procrastination or fear of taking the steps toward supporting enterprise.
We had the same idea but wanted to go much much further.
You should really try it out, its called Collusion.
https://col.lu/
You have to sign up but it keeps your drawings like google docs and is real-time collaborative without the other people signing up.
Works on everything too, tablets, laptops, supports ms surface etc and is free for public drawings.
A lot of what is shown is actually collaboration between 'Kat' and 'Lola' in real-time. Being able to input information from any device, view and present it on some other device, and of course also being able to convert any situation into a conference with someone else is really important and a great vision really. All of that is what we actually focus on at Collusion (https://collusionapp.com/) which is free to use at the moment and does a lot of this in a less slick way.
With the introduction of more and more large screen interactive devices, wearables, pen enabled devices and Virtual reality/AR options, we can open up more and more possibilities that are shown in this clip.
Whats more is that augmented reality is shown a lot here which will become more and more prevalent as a way to blend productivity with the world around us, as well as generally making things more human/natural/fluid, which is also very interesting for the near future, though perhaps not the augmentation without a HMD anytime soon.
As high production the video is and unrealistic or embellished some things might be, effortless and instant transition of information through our systems is certainly possible and I think very probable and I'm glad that MS is showing that in it's vision for productivity in the enterprise. Which is what this video is really about. Microsoft, with its connections to so many diverse electronics business's like Intel, Wacom and Samsung it could certainly deliver on many of these concepts into the future given the right software.
Absolutely. Non-linear processes I think, is a crucial difference, your mind jumps around thoughts, perhaps even in parallel and so having a medium that lets you do that is important. It feels more natural, more free-form.
Interestingly, presenting and sharing your ideas should be done in a non linear way too. People like to drive their own learning and understanding; so when you share your idea with others you want to be able to: jump around, accept feedback and engage with their thought patterns, that are in fact non-linear.
Agreed, as a programmer, you are constantly able to think faster than you can express yourself, and it certainly feels as though nothing you can do (not even typing) allows you to lay out your thoughts and play around with them does it justice. Some of my best memories and learnings were discovered on paper and pen while at my keyboard. And often we stick them up on the walls afterward to serve a as a reminder and reference.
One good example of this is state machines, sometimes there is just so much state to track in a system, your brain no longer than handle enough combinations, or dimensions.
I like to draw them out (which is why I started https://collusionapp.com), and then outsource some of the brain work to others by sharing it as well so they can help me with the confusing aspects of the states once I've mentally unloaded them onto the page.
I think drawing the thoughts out lets you then "forget" the entire context of the problem and allows your "mind space" to kind of focus on the sub-parts or details of the problem.
I just don't feel like ONLY text can solve that while we still have people like us who were brought up with pen and paper.
I really think the benefit of technology here over conventional handwriting is the ability to outsource thinking through sharing, which helps with not thinking fast enough as well as being able to deliver your message in a freeform and quick manner, especially with creative disciplines.
I think having super quick access is also important before you lose thoughts too, I guess having tabs open already kind of like blank paper is super useful.
I actually research this kind of thing a lot, Pen and paper is surely great, and passing it physically, and being offline are certainly its benefits.
https://collusionapp.com/ tries to solve the quick sketches and the sharing, which is the winnable battle, the fact that pen and paper is tangible can be won with tablets, but my company tried that, we made a pen and I thought it was good, but it didn't really stick. That might have been for a variety of confusing reasons though.
One thing though is that we are definitely getting closer, and I can at least attest that both hand writing and typing have their place, and the digital and real life hand writing also have their own special places.
Its great to see more startup support in this weak area. I really hope replicated/gravitational succeed, and perhaps more articles can be written to help the rest of us reduce the procrastination or fear of taking the steps toward supporting enterprise.