More Related Content More from Maxwell Hoffmann (9) #STC13 ADOBE DAY: Journey from Paper to Voice (keynote)1. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
A Journey from Paper to Voice
Charles Corfield | CEO | nVoq, Inc. | www.nvoq.com | charles.corfield@nvoq.com
2. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
About myself
Charles Corfield
Creator of FrameMaker
CEO of nVoq, Boulder, CO
Private Equity Investor
Serial Entrepreneur
Climber
Long distance runner
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3. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
The arc of technology
Paper
Structure
Internet
Mobile
Voice
4. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
The birth of Word: HW, memory available
1983
Personal Computers with:
512K of memory
Floppy disk storage
Windows not invented yet
Word focused on word processing
only
4
Only enough memory for word
processing:
• No page layout
• No graphics editing
• Very limited doc size
5. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
The birth of FrameMaker: HW, memory available
1986
UNIX workstations with:
2 megs of memory
>10 MEGS of hard disc storage
Multitasking operating system
TeX and troff
Manuals –1000s of pages, lots of
large vector graphics
Workstations were used by “teams”
for collaborative authoring, not
personal productivity
5
Enough memory for:
• Word processing
• Page layout
• Graphic editing
• Hyperlinks
6. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
The early days
FrameMaker 0.X
Graduate student at Columbia
First prototype on a Sun 2/120 in a NYC apartment
FrameMaker 1.0
Unified pagination and page layout (MacWrite + MacDraw)
Symmetric treatment of page layout and paginatable text flows
Target
Long documents – replace troff & LaTeX
Paper output
Content creation
By humans
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Content Management Issues
First content management problems
Internal references
Footnotes, indexes, and cross references
Markers
External references
External graphics
Hypertext
Managing variants of a single document – Single Source Publishing
Variables
Conditional text
Frozen pagination & Change-pages
8. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Documents and Databases
Boeing’s 777 project
Store document content in a database
Retrieve content from database, display in a browser
SGML (Ancestor of HTML, XML, …)
Possibly the first “web” delivery of documentation
Consequences
FrameMaker + SGML
“Structure”, HTML, XML, DITA
Server-based generation of documents
9. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Presentation Revolution – From Paper to Mobile Devices
Paper
First “retina” display – sophisticated layouts to maximize the user-experience
Computers
Then – Displays had 72dpi – crude layouts,
Now – Retina displays have 300+ dpi
Back to what we learned to do on paper
Plus dynamic content from hi-res streaming video and graphics
Proliferation of platforms
Desktop computers, laptops, smart phones, tablets, …
Unix, DOS & MacOS Windows, Mac, Android + variants, iOS, … (Unix lives on as
Linux/Android)
Large diversity of screen sizes. Short life time of devices in the market.
10. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Presentation Revolution – From Paper to Mobile Devices
Impact on document authoring
Requirement to produce both structure and rich page layouts
Requirement to support dynamic content (video, animation, …)
Requirement to manage content for consumption on multiple platforms
Good news! – Already baked into FrameMaker…
Other tools will struggle to manage and deliver as diverse content, for as many
platforms, with as rich presentation
11. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Emerging technology – Voice
Voice addresses the following UI issues:
Screen real estate is full
Add a new widget Remove an existing widget
Keyboard shortcuts are hard to remember
How many keyboard shortcuts does the average user know?
Touch screens Slow data entry
Tablets are a convenient way to present content
Tablets could be used by mobile/ambulatory workers for filling in forms, if only data entry
were quicker…
Key enabler: Speech recognition is now “free”
MS/Google/Apple include it in their platforms
12. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Impact of Voice on Products
Applications will start to support voice
Initially as a “virtual keyboard”
Visual tips/guides for “What can I say here?”
Future – support context dependent recognition
Impact on developers
Developers need to understand grammars and language models
Developers need to be familiar the human factors of voice interfaces
13. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Impact of Voice on Products
Impact on product documentation
Understanding how voice modifies existing workflows
Communicating a product’s “voice experience” to end-users
Writers will need a knowledge of linguistics
Writers will also be users of voice!
Interesting observation: Many technical writers have been exposed to structure and
linguistics, which is an excellent foundation for voice.
Prediction (and I am not committing Adobe to anything…):
FrameMaker will “assimilate” voice,
just as it has done with everything else…
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Workflow Optimization
Epilog – What have I been doing since FrameMaker?
Measuring Mt. Everest
Running the White Rim Trail in a Day USA Track & Field 50 Mile Champion
Breaking a Leadville 100 mile record
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Contact Information
15
Information
Charles Corfield
nVoq, Inc.
CEO
E-mail
E-mail
Web
charles.corfield@nvoq.com (corporate)
cnc@lhotse.com (personal)
www.nvoq.com