Livescribe Pulse SmartPen: An Ethnographer’s dream tool?

Livescribe just announced the next iteration of their beautiful Pulse Pen, a new 4gig model in titanium and black. The Livescribe pen is a digital pen that writes on digital paper, records your writing, records audio, and does many other cool stuff. Essentially you dont’ ever have to scan in what you write anymore! With their special paper and pen, you can have everything digitally recorded foreeeeever! Here’s a good review from Berry Review comparing scanned notebook with livescribe paper and a demo from the Livescribe website.

I bought this pen for several reasons.

1. I like to write on paper still. And I’ve stopped because I was always losing my paper. So now Livescribe solves that problem!
2. I want to record audio while I write - this is awesome for doing fieldwork! As I am interviewing people I can write down my notes while recording their voice! OMG
3. I want to doodle again. I love doodling, drawing graphs, mapping ideas out - livescribe allows me to upload all my doodles easily!

After I bought it I found even some more cool features that I didn’t know of!

1. you can play the piano! this was soooo cool!  you can add beats and change the instrument. Here’s a video of me making my piano and composing a masterpiece - THIS IS too fun
2. you can have it translate basic words in several languages - Mandarin, Swedish, ARabic, and Spanish - probably more but I didn’t look into. Here’s a video of me translating “beer” into all the available languages on the demo card.
3. they sell small notebooks that you can carry around with you the size of a book for only $13 for a pack of two. So  that means you’re not stuck with the big 8x11 notebook that they include in the box when you buy the pen.

After I started using the Livescribe, I was faced with some new questions from an ethnographer’s perspective.

While the pen is useful for the ethnographer, what does it communicate to the interviewee?  Is it ethical to use a tool that doesn’t look like a traditional audio recorder to audio record an interview or interaction?  With note-taking for ethnographer moving beyond the traditional pen/pencil paper to a digital process, the benefits for the ethnographer are clear but does this effect the interview process?

The site of an audio recorder can sometimes prevent people from being as free to share information and personal thoughts. So I thought this is cool - the livescribe pen can help ME ease my anxiety about taping!  But then I thought from the participant’s perspective - what do they think when I tell them in the beginning of the interview that I would like their permission to tape this interview and that I will be taping it with this “pen”?

In many of the places that I am working, communication technology such as cellphones is relatively new and people don’t have spending money for creative gadgets. I think this pen might freak people out!  Ok Maybe they wouldn’t be freaked out, but I can imagine them being a bit weirded out and curious at the same time - and then I wonder if their processing of the “pen” as an audio recorder would get in the way of the interview goals at hand.

I wonder if they would think well if this thing *looks* like a pen but is an audio recorder but also is a pen because she’s writing with it - what else could she have on her that is not really what it appears to be?  Or what if this also doubled as a video camera (which would be totally awesome! Livescribe designers build a video cam into this!)  Would people start thinking what other conspicuous looking devices are recording the interaction?

There’s something very clear when you take out a separate tool that functions as an audio recorder or camera to document an interaction. It sends a clear message about the intention of the  interaction: this process, your actions, the surrounding - is being recorded. The tools can makes the “ethnographic moment” explicit. Whereas if are using tools that look like pens to do all those things - perhaps that takes some of the power away from the participants. In the Human Subjects Review Process, the assumption in the application is that when you say you’re going to ask a subject for permission to tape an interview, the researcher is going to audio record with a traditional digital audio recorder.

I was even thinking that if I had the chance to take this pen into my fieldsite, when I ask for permission to tape an interview, I could take out my audio recorder and place it on the table. But then I would actually tape with it with my pen

Now I hope that my relationship with my participants are always based first and foremost on trust. So I don’t think they would be suspicious of my intentions or of my “tools” But I am just imagining for general research purposes and situations where maybe it’s not deep ethnography - maybe it’s just one time or 2 week project where you don’t get the chance to establish a close relationship.

Well either way, the Livescribe pen I believe is an ethnographer’s dream come true.

Here’s where this post becomes very personal and sad and also why I don’t have any stories of me taking my pen into my field sites. Please do not proceed if you do not want to hear heart-wrenching news….

I bought my dream pen in March of 2009.

and here comes the horrific news…

I LOST MY LIVESCRIBE PEN 33 DAYS AFTER I PURCHASED IT.

Only 5 months later am I able to admit this without pain. I’ve only told 4 people in the world before this post - a close friend, two of my phd advisors, and a stranger I saw in the airport with the pen. Weeks after I lost it I had high hopes of finding it again - so I wasn’t ready to admit that it really gone.

I lost it on a my flight from DC to JFK on Delta. I have NEVER had a pleasant experience flying on Delta Airlines. So losing my precious Livescribe pen on one of their flights is one more reason to avoid flying Delta. I called and called their lost and found. I even went back to the Delta lost and found office at their JFK terminal in person - but it was never to be found.

I have to blame someone, and certainly I cannot blame the loss of the Livescribe on myself. So I would like to officialy transfer the blame from myself to Delta Airlines.

Delta, you suck. You lost my pen. One of your morally deficient customers took my pen and they never returned it to the Delta Lost and Found. Your airline and your customers suck.Your Lost and Found customer service agents were always rude and they didn’t take me seriously when I told them that I had lost a very special pen.  They laughed at me. you suck.

Ok now that I’ve finished transferring the blame to Delta, I would love to expound on why I was so in love my Livescribe. My feelings are still raw, full of passion and pain -  but I am in a state where I’ve moved beyond anger and am able to talk about my pen without tears.

Ode to Livescribe

Livescribe, you were always good to me when we were together. you never left my purse. you never walked out on me for another notebook. Although then you only worked on a PC - I comprised and took you to my netbook. I see now that you operate on OSX. Well if we were together still I would introduce you to my Mac Air. I love you still. you are committed to excellence. I filled up your 2 gig capacity so quickly, but now I see you’ve grown up to a 4 gig adult. I wanted to take you everywhere with me to all my research sites around the world we could’ve seen the mountains in Mexico, the <polluted> Rivers in china, the stars in the Appalachia - but…alas, we were separated…but only in this lifetime.

SO i’ve thought long and hard about this - about why I lost it.

• is it because I treated it (in my tired state) as just any other pen? I don’t keep track of my regular pens and I never have invested in those $100 pens or received any expensive White gold-plated pens.
• Is it because my brain hadn’t switched to thinking - this pen is FREAKING expensive and special - don’t let it leave your hands?
• it is because I am not mature enough for creative gadgets that look conspicuous yet have multiple functions?

While those are all possible answers, I have another theory. I think I lost it because I didn’t have it strapped around my neck. I should’ve used the neck strap that came with the Livescribe pen.

Now Livescribe designers - this is where you have to listen to me - I didn’t use the strap because it was reallllly ugly! I don’t think I am the only customer retarded enough to lose their pen (ok it’s quite possible I am the only one so far) - so I think you should make it easier for people to fashionably hang their pen around their neck. I suggest moving away from the rounded string to a flatter shoe-lace like strong. Also the thinner the better - and something that is adjustable would be great. like a slide knot. i can definitely tell you that the black string will not look good with your new beautiful titanium pen.

Also Livescribe you HAVE to design a better looking case! the black case that was included in the box was disappointing - I couldn’t even get my pen out of  the case half the time! it was to tight and it was just plane ugly. You’ve designed such a beautiful pen so there’s not excuse for failure with the pen’s case.  The case itself (if used) can become a reminder to someone who’s lost-prone like me to take special care of the pen - so the case has to be beautiful ok?  I didn’t use the case after the first day when I realized that it would take me at least 5 sec to struggle to get the pen out of the case.

while I am at it - is there any way to make a tiny indent for the fingers? my fingers would ache after writing because the pen is so thick.

(btw now I know that if you buy something with your American Express card they have a protection plan that will give you your money back if you lose or have something stolen within 90 days. I know this 6 months too late.)

The first moment of Livescribe love - Setting up the pen (all the photos of my pen)