Entrepreneurs and employees alike are increasingly moving towards mobile working. Gone are the days when we’re confined to an office and a desktop computer – much of today’s business is conducted on-the-go with the help of apps and devices. However, being constantly on-the-go can have a drastic impact on your productivity. Technology that can tackle this while also providing a pleasurable experience is in high demand.
Three emerging technologies, in particular, are improving our interactions with our mobile devices and making the most of these input methods can boost overall productivity. Here’s what you need to know.
Predictive keyboards
Whether sending an email or text, being on the go means sending the message out – but that may come at a cost. Predictive keyboards, available on smartphones or tablets, suggest upcoming words for speedy typing. They analyze previous text you’ve entered and over time, build a custom dictionary of words and phrases.
Due to widespread demand, the market for this tech is thriving. In an effort to “reinvent productivity”, tech giant Microsoft acquired in February 2016 Swiftkey, a maker of predictive software keyboard apps. It is estimated that Swiftkey users have saved nearly 10 trillion keystrokes, across 100 languages.
To maximize productivity with predictive text, learn to edit your dictionary by adding common words that aren’t typically recognized and removing words that your keyboard incorrectly attempts to add. You’ll be saving time with predictive keyboards and making the most out of this tool.
Gesture Recognition
While it’s dominated the gaming world for some time, gesture recognition also has some practical appeal for the workplace. Gesture recognition can be used to make the same commands users otherwise would by tapping a touchscreen or clicking a mouse, by utilizing mathematical algorithms to interpret human gestures. The most common method uses 3D information to accurately obtain several important parameters, such as palm position and joint angles.
Using a skeletal representation of the body, analysis is performed to understand the position and orientation of certain segments. One company at the forefront of gesture recognition technology is eyeSight, which delivers simple user interactions across devices. This enables touch-free device control with the swipe of a hand or point of a finger.
You can turn to gesture recognition to save time on the job because you can complete the current task with the wave of a hand. As an added bonus, gesture recognition is a more hygienic solution for when multiple users are interacting on a single screen. The ease of use for a gesture compared to a mouse click or touch is often debated, and only the user can determine the best input mechanism for a specific use case.
Handwriting Recognition
As an entrepreneur, you’ve likely returned from a business trip or meeting and spent a significant amount of time reviewing handwritten notes. Thanks to handwriting recognition (or, HWR) technology, you can capture everything – from notes to doodles and drawings – virtually in digital ink. Instead of traditional digital ink that is laborious to edit and rearrange, interactive ink technology empowers the stylus to edit handwritten notes as easily as a keyboard.
Digital ink reflows to fit the screen size and orientation. These are operations not provided by alternative digital ink applications. Handwritten notes can now easily be edited and searched for keywords, dates or phrases just as typed text is searched and managed with a keyboard, saving you time to work on other more important tasks. How much precious time is wasted retyping handwritten notes? That is no longer a barrier to productivity.
At MyScript, we’re working to make handwriting recognition as accessible as possible. Using “interactive ink” to easily edit and bring various handwritten graphics into the digital workflow will transform the way we conduct business in person and online. Mobile users can enjoy a new, more efficient approach to note taking or data collection that increases productivity.
Predictive keyboards, gesture recognition, and handwriting recognition are just a few examples of mobile productivity tools on the rise for entrepreneurs. Which tools help you stay organized and efficient on the go?