Innovative design example: Text cursor design
As humans, we adapt easily.  The more familiar we become with how things operate, the more we overlook the design flaws and imperfections.  That is why we often fail to notice opportunities for improvements and breakthroughs, simply because we fail to notice the problems.  We have become too familiar, too used to things the way they are.  Too used to seeing a simple text cursor...

We are all familiar with entering data into a computer, whether filling in forms,  using a word processor to type a letter, or typing in login names and passwords.  So familiar in fact, that we often take for granted the ubiquitous blinking text cursor that exists to show us where the next character we enter will appear on the screen.

While evaluating handwriting recognition (HWR) systems on PDAs, an early version of Graffiti did not use the input panel that is now a familiar sight on PDAs today.  Users had to tell the HWR system that the next character written was an uppercase letter or a number by preceding it with a special mode gesture.  One stroke up would mean a 'Shifted' state, while two strokes up in succession meant 'Caps'.  A backslash meant the next character entered was a number.  A quick analysis revealed the problem that users might get interrupted while writing and upon resuming would not know what input mode or state they were in, since there were no visual cues.

I quickly realized that this was potentially a problem with all text input systems, depending on the input device used.  We did not notice the problem on computer keyboards before as they had LEDs to indicate Caps and enough keys not to require dedicated input modes.  Many other smaller keyboards and keypads on mobile devices such as phones and palmtops do not have LED indicators for CAPS and because of key limitations, may have to implement a number pad on letter keys, essentially creating a numbers mode.  The common solution for these devices was to place an indicator in some corner or edge of the display that would show the mode.  The problem was that these were seldom noticed and thus not effective.

The solution was simple - use the text cursor as a mode cue.  The point of visual focus during text input is always at the text cursor - that's why it blinks, to catch our visual attention.  We check for input errors at the cursor location, so we seldom take our eyes off the cursor (which is why we don't notice the mode indicators located elsewhere on the screen).

The solution was to use different text cursors to indicate CAPS, numbers and Shift modes.  In the pictures above, the left picture shows a normal text cursor, while the picture on the right shows the text cursor in CAPS mode.  Different devices would only need to implement the modes relevant to them.  CAPS was the only mode that was common to all input devices, so at the very least, a device just needed to have two visually distinct text cursors, one for normal and one for CAPS state.  A different size, color, thickness and/or a different shape could be used for the CAPS cursor, perhaps a tiny arrowhead at the top of the cursor.

With eyes focused on the text cursor, users would always be kept conscious what input state they are in.  It would have wide ranging applications, from mobile phones to PC applications (useful for entering passwords which are often case-sensitive) and any other device capable of upper and lower case text input.  This solution also received a U.S. patent.

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