Digital Pen and Paper: crossing the chasm?

Introduction

Digital Pen and Paper has been around for a long time, but sometimes it does not feel like it. Anoto filed patents for their technology as far back as 1998. Anoto partners and resellers have been actively developing and marketing digital pen and paper solutions for pretty much all of the 21st Century. And yet the product does not seem to have entered into the popular consciousness in the way that, say, the iPhone has despite the fact that the latter product has only been around since 2007.  So is there a problem with Digital Pen and, if so, what is it?

MIT's Kenneth Morse said that amongst the factors affecting the adoption of innovation are;

•             relative advantage

•             compatibility

•             complexity

•             trial-ability

•             observability

It is worth spending some time looking at each factor in turn;

Relative Advantage

Digital pen projects are usually either commissioned to displace an existing technology (such as PDAs, laptops or tablet PC) or are 'greenfield' projects where processes are based on traditional form filling, sometimes involving scanning and sometimes involving re-keying or dual keying of some sort.  A case for demonstrating the advantage of digital pen in both these cases in terms of usability is usually straightforward.  The pen is simpler to use than other input devices, does not require regular software updates and does not have parts that wear out and need replacing (apart from ink).  Similarly, a process that eliminates scanning and re-keying will be faster and cheaper.

Measuring this advantage comes down mainly to a simple cost benefit equation; does the labour saving outweigh the cost of the digital pen solution? Is the pen solution cheaper than the technology it is set to displace? Can speeding up a process be measured in terms of pounds & pence? – is that more than the cost of the solution?

To date this question has often been a complex one due to the pricing regimes of the digital pen vendors.  At one level this is perfectly natural as the vendors sought to recoup their not inconsiderable investment by adding a price premium to their early adopters, but it has hampered take up by customers.  In more recent times, pricing has come down and been simplified, thus enabling a business case to be made for digital pen projects.

Compatibility

As a single use device this is not such an important question for digital pen.  Digital pen is compatible with the most widely used desktop PCs and mobile phones and smart phones (apart from the iPhone)

Complexity

The complexity of digital pen applications is something of a paradox.  The pen is extremely simple to use, has a very low training overhead compared to other devices (we can all use a pen and paper) and requires little or no user administration, other than to charge the battery, replace the cap when not using it and replacing refills.  When implementing digital pen into large organisations, problems arise when data from the pen has to be processed by back office systems.  Whilst most digital pen platform providers supply toolsets that support up todate integration methods (most work by producing pen data in XML format which is then pushed out via web services), this can often mean that a large budget “waterfall” style development project is required to deliver full benefits to the organisation.  Thus the expectation created by a simple input device does not result in simple integration steps.  This has not been helped in the UK market by some very ambitious digital pen projects, which have failed for a number of reasons, largely down to vendor competence, that have created a belief in some minds that digital pen projects are too difficult.

Trialability

This is closely linked to complexity.  Most digital pen projects fail at the pilot stage, usually because success criteria have been poorly defined or the metrics have not been put in place to measure the success or otherwise of the pilot.  Also, organisations are unwilling commit funds to do back office integration at the pilot stage meaning that they never see the full benefits realised only by having pen data flowing into back office systems.

Observability

Part of the success of the iPhone was down to the ‘viral marketing’ of the product.  People saw friends and colleagues using them, key influencers in the media used them and spoke, wrote or blogged about them.  The iPhone quickly became an essential lifestyle accessory.  The visibility of the digital pen has not been as great.  Early adopters of the pen used them largely for personal productivity/note taking purposes.  The digital pen is only going to ‘cross the chasm’ into use by the ‘early majority’ through use by the enterprise market, so observations of note taking provided only an indirect connection in influencers minds as to how that might translated into use in their business.  This translation process has been intermittent and patchy.

Conclusion

The digital pen has a proven business case when used by expensive knowledge workers on critical business applications.  This case is usually made in direct time/labour savings or by speeding up processing to meet a compliance or business need.  Take up of the digital pen has been hampered by a lack of high profile and observable project successes and by poorly conceived and implemented trial projects.