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1990's to 2000
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IBM Almaden Research Center
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Based on research since the late 1990's, researchers at the IBM Almaden
Research Center published the first rigorous mathematical optimization result of
touch keyboard based on the Metropolis algorithm used by
scientists to understand molecule structures. Viewing each key in a stylus
keyboard as an atom and using the total atomic energy function to drive the
keyboard structural organization, they called their keyboard ATOMIK. The observations made in studying
soft keyboard that people tend to remember letter sequence as
shapes and traces and some words can be connected by gesture strokes led to
the invention of shape writing.
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2002
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Shumin Zhai and Per Ola Kristensson naming their prototype "SHARK"
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On August 28, 2002, the first MS thesis on shape writing was completed
by Per Ola Kristensson under the supervision of Dr.
Shumin Zhai, then a visiting professor on sabbatical from IBM Research
at Linkoping University, Sweden
The first scientific paper on gesture keyboard "Shorthand
Writing on Stylus Keyboard" was submitted to and accepted by the ACM
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2003). The paper
demonstrated the first working gesture keyboard, dubbed SHARK at the time.
The paper also empirically tested and supported the cognitive theory of shape
writing - users can quickly progress from
visually-guided individual letter tracing towards shape recall based stroke
gesturing on keyboard.
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2003
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First gesture keyboard paper publishsed at ACM CHI 2003
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On April 8, 2003 the first shape writing paper was presented and the
first working system publically demonstrated at ACM
CHI 2003 The paper was published by ACM Press.
On April 9, 2003 an article about shape writing appeared
in the San Jose Mercury News ("Making more of handhelds") and followed by online blogs. This article was syndicated to
other major news media in the United
States, for example Seattle Times, Arizona
Star and SiliconValley.com.
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2004
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The world's first gesture keyboard
release
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Based on research done at the IBM Almaden
Research Center, the first system paper on shape writing with detailed
statistical algorithms embedding human action laws was published
at ACM UIST 2004 in October 2004. A companion
video was also released.
Also in October 2004, the first shape writing system, dubbed SHARK, was
publically released by IBM
AlphaWorks.
It was instantly hailed as "Text Entry Epiphany" by trial users and
reviewers. It was also reported in major news media including the New York Times.
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2005
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In the 2005 New Paradigms in User Computing (NPUC) Workshop Shumin
Zhai presented and demonstrated SHARK to a large group of Silicon
Valley researchers, designers, engineers, and technology
reporters. CNET reported about the technology in
real time as Shumin Zhai was presenting. After trying out the software, San
Jose Mercury News columnist Mike Langberg wrote the
first comprehensive review "A
New Way of Writing", syndicated to many other newspapers in the US
from The Miam Herald to The Seattle Times
Later the implication of shape writing to the mobile IT industry was
more broadly recognized in various media
reports. Punning on the ideas of progressing from recognition to
recall, BBC News call it "Total recall boosts
PDA writing". The German science magazine bild der wissenschaft predicts
that ShapeWriter may "revolutionize how humans interact with all sorts of
electronic devices".
Also in 2005, a paper on Elastic Stylus Keyboard was
published which outlined how the underlining technology of shape writing
could also be applied to automatically correct errors on touch keyboard
tapping.
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2006
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The first book chapter on shape writing, Introduction to shape writing, was written
for a graduate text book on Text Entry Systems.
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2007
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ShapeWriter Inc Beijing Office
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ShapeWriter Inc was founded on IBM Research's spin-off technologies to
productize ShapeWriter on mobile phones, navigators, tablets, and all other
types of touch screen devices. Engineers in ShapeWriter Inc started to port
and develop products on various operating systems. A YouTube
video documenting their work was released in May 2007.
In June 2007, the first PhD
thesis on shape writing was publically defended by Per Ola Kristensson based on his work done under the supervision
of Dr. Shumin Zhai at Linköping
University and the IBM Almaden
Research Center.
The first research paper on shape
writing commands and a paper on learning shape writing by game playing were
also published in 2007.
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2008
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ShapeWriter Inc engineers begin perfecting ShapeWriter technology on Windows,
Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone and other mobile
platforms.
In April 2008 ShapeWriter WritingPad on
Android was completed and submitted to Google Android Developer Challenge. In
May 2008 it was selected as one of the 50 winners among 1800 ADC
entrants.
In July 2008, iPhone WritingPad,
the first implementation of ShapeWriter on iPhone,
was completed and released as one of the first publically available
applications in Apple's iTunes/App Store. It was enthusiastically received by
the iPhone user community. Within first 24
hours, over 50 reviews were written about it. To quote a few: "I
didn't expect this to work at all, but it worked perfectly" "It's
so amazing how intuitive this is" "it absolutely works"
"I was shocked at how easy it was to use" "I'm absolutely in
love with this app" "I write faster with WritingPad
than with iPhone's touch keyboard or with
Blackberry's keypad" "This is one of the coolest apps I have
seen" "Very impressive" "wonderful"
"awesome" "fantastic" "A++++++!!!!". The iPhone WritingPad was also
selected as Time's 11 must-have iPhone
apps and reached a download rate of 30,000 per day.
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2009
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ShapeWriter is released on
Windows, Windows Mobile, Apple iPhone and Google
Android. ShapeWriter won several awards including Silicon Valley Android
Developer favorite apps and Silicon Valley
and China Wireless Association Emerging Leaders.
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2010
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ShapeWriter's commercial applications continue to mature. ShapeWriter
on Android now released with English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and
Swedish language databases. ShapeWriter also has additional languages including
Chinese and Japanese in beta test.
In May 2010, ShapeWriter Inc was acquired by Nuance Communications,
the world market leader in information input.
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