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Inkbase: Programmable Ink (2022)


What would be possible if hand-drawn sketches were programmable like spreadsheets?

Spreadsheets support gradual enrichment by allowing you to quickly put text and numbers in arbitrary boxes as if using a pen and graph paper, do basic math as if using a calculator, move things into neat rows and columns when you find yourself making comparisons, and add more formula-driven cells and labels if/when necessary as your model evolves—incrementally building dynamic complexity over time. When a tool pushes you into inappropriate levels of precision, it can slow you down and suppress creativity: you want to quickly throw a box on the screen but by the time you’ve chosen the drop-shadow depth and rounded-corner radius, that whiff of an idea has dissipated. If we want to start at the beginning of the dependency chain to explore use cases and the feel of a tool like this, we need to build a vertical slice through this whole stack to produce a working prototype we can actually play with.

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Programmable Ink