Innovative design example: PDA design

Many personal digital assistants (PDAs) have separate contacts, appointments, memos and to-do applications which allow users to capture, store and retrieve data.  In order to capture data, users had to:
  1)  Decide which of these applications to use
  2)  Launch the application
  3)  Select 'New' entry, then capture the information
Seems like a pretty logical way to do things.

When the product division in my previous company started designing PDAs, I began by observing how users actually went about capturing, storing and retrieving data in their paper or electronic organizers.  The key observation was that data storage and data retrieval were organized activities but data capture was not an organized activity.

Users often captured data by scribbling on any conveniently available piece of paper - on newspaper margins, paper scraps or post-its.  Such data often came from sources like someone dropping by their desks or through phone calls which interrupted whatever they were doing.  They had to capture the data quickly or risk losing it.  It was too cumbersome to decide which application to use, launch it, click 'New' and then capture the data.  Data capture usually occurred under time pressure.

In contrast, data storage and data retrieval were done at users' leisure. They could slowly review captured data to decide where to organize and store it properly (for long-term data) or to leave it on the scrap paper since it would be thrown away after use (for short-term data).

This 'capture first, organize later' usage model led to the design of an always-available scratchpad application on the PDA which allowed quick capture of information as well as temporary storage of short-term data.  Users could choose to organize and store long-term data from the scratchpad by simply dragging the required data off the scratchpad into the appropriate application icon or screen, which would create it as a new entry automatically.

Information from the user and task analysis was used to derive a solution that closely supported user tasks and the manner in which they were performed in the real world.  This solution was awarded 2 U.S. patents.

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