When you're working on a problem, you ought to be able to calculate, model, and simulate as easily as you can write and draw. Software tools help you do the former, but with interfaces that don't fit the loose, sketchy feel of exploratory thinking. And pen & paper have satisfied the latter for centuries, but suddenly seem lacking without undo and duplicate.
We are researching how to have both at once: a digital paper notebook with flexible affordances for thinking, and programming that flows naturally from your pen.
Lab Notes
We share internal planning docs, mockups from our design jams, tiny throwaway prototypes, and other creative ephemera.
Projects
PlayBook— 2024, ongoing
A thorough design for a programmable notebook drawing on everything we've learned so far.
Inkling— Fall 2023
A digital back-of-the-napkin for sketching dynamic models, with tangible constraints that feel playful.
Habitat— Winter 2022
How various approaches to representation and computation might coexist on a single page.
Untangle— Summer 2022
An examination of how a pen-based interface could be an alternative approach to solving logic problems with an SMT solver.
Crosscut— Winter 2021
Uniting the directness of pen & paper with the dynamism of software.
Inkbase— Summer 2021
What would be possible if hand-drawn sketches were programmable like spreadsheets?