Day 5 of DIVVY/dual Project#1 “Type-Trace”

The size of the font changes according to the time it took for you to type – in other words, the longer you pause, the larger the font of the next letter you type.

Being bilingual, I have the liberty of trying out the program both in Japanese and English. Here is what I have found so far: Visually, I think that the Japanese version is more interesting, as it seems to detect words rather than letters. While the English version changes the size of each letter, the Japanese version clumps words or phrases together, so that the meaning of the word itself becomes magnified. Thus, this affects the way in which the text is read later, or possibly the meaning of the text itself compared to when it is merely “flat”. Meanwhile, the English version reads much the same way as a normal text, with minimal changes (maybe the first letter of each word, if you are a relatively competent typist).

I find it interesting that the Japanese version affects the meaning of the text through visual stimulation. I guess the effect is similar to that of pictures (“emoji”) used in mobile phone text messages which are used to convey emotions through images. These visual punctuations give the text a visual cue of sorts, making it easier for the reader to pick up on the underlying tone of the message (or at least the tone that the sender wants to convey). But in this case, the punctuation lies not in the words that the typist chooses, but in those words detected automatically by the program after a time lapse, or mind-lapse if you will. Thus, the meaning of the text gradually shifts from the literal meaning typed and assumed by the writer, to one artificially given by technology, through variables like time and skill. This sort of shift in meaning does not occur with the English version of Type Trace, as only letters are subject to this enlargement of font.

To those who cannot read/write Japanese, this additional (and possibly one of the more interesting) aspect of the program may be lost on them. Perhaps it might be interesting to see whether an English version which detects and highlights whole words can be developed, to parallel the Japanese version.