Dasher | clagnut/blog

Dasher posted 30th August 2003

Dasher is the most incredible writing interface I think I’ve ever seen.

Dasher is a zooming interface. You point where you want to go, and the display zooms in wherever you point. The world into which you are zooming is painted with letters, so that any point you zoom in on corresponds to a piece of text. The more you zoom in, the longer the piece of text you have written. You choose what you write by choosing where to zoom.

Basically its a combination of intelligent (it learns) text prediction and arcade game. The user only needs up and down controls to write as quickly as most people can type; its application for paralysed users and even phone texters is clear.

Ian Lloyd wrote:

I tried it out on Pocket PC, and while it’s certainly inventive, it was very difficult, I felt, to use effectively – I couldn’t spot spaces, and felt that it was more like an arcade game than a sensible writing device. A very inventive idea but not terribly usable at the moment, in my opinion.

3 Sep 2003, 12:38 GMT

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