That’s less the grass and more the new product conceptualized by design strategy firm Kaleidoscope. With it’s slick e-reading interface, stylus enabled note taking, and at an estimated cost of only $100, Papyrus woos students and instructors away from said ‘clunky technology’ into a collaborative environment replacing textbooks, notes, and even calculators.
It’s still unclear whether or not Papyrus would facilitate an opensource initiative (gated communities like Facebook make it difficult for open environments to share useful information); and making claims like ‘tag content’ is a bit like stating ‘breathe air’, with the ubiquity of tag features in online applications these days. However, skepticism aside, the Papyrus interface design is refreshing: a simple four button navigation, with no clue to an operating system. Quite literally, Papyrus looks like a page of paper marked up with notes and populated with comments – a simple, unobtrusive digital extension of a traditional method.
What also strikes my mind is the content itself, which is course materials. Our neighbors here on campus, www.utilium.com, have taken their own initiative in this endeavor – it would be interesting to see how PReE’s own self-directed/research audience might benefit from this as well. In the early stages of our development, we have identified the need to accommodate the course pack, however time being the task master that it is, we have chosen to focus on independent researchers. However, this does present an interesting challenge later on down the road when we might start facilitating course packs along with documented research materials. If our users were chefs, how would we facilitate grocery lists, recipes, meal plans, and staff management? Is it possible to be everything to everybody? The challenge is in keeping clarity with complexity, and perhaps taking a nod from Papyrus: keep it simple, keep it relevant.