WritePad Review by MS1 Eric Ton

WritePad is a writing-to-text conversion app. When I obtained this app I imagined how useful it would be while taking a patient history or doing any kind of interview, as writing notes while another person is speaking just feels more natural than typing. I believe that having writing converted to text effortlessly would be a great asset to clinics and hospitals, who may want to retain a digital copy of the original histories in a more streamlined manner.

Pros
-It was sensitive to different styluses: one homemade (by my classmate Kate) as well as the adonit.
-It converted correctly 80-90% of my writing and got better over time as it got more acclimated with my writing style
-It was simple to use, as I had a lot of room to write words and they get immediately converted to text

Cons
-As it was simple to use, a downside was that it was lacking in certain features like an eraser/cross-out button or ways to highlight or underline text.
-Since editing was slow as a result, it was not practical to do it during an interview
-The original writing was not preserved, so if a word or string of words was misinterpreted, I had to take extra time to remember what I wrote at the time
-Moving text around was not really possible

Bottom Line: This app does well enough what it is supposed to do, which is converting writing to text immediately. However this was not that useful for me after trying it out for a month, and not after being accustomed with other apps with more in-app editing features like iAnnotate or Notability. I believe it would be most useful if used during an interview and writing notes once straight through, with the expectation to edit afterwards, perhaps by sending it to another app with more annotation features.

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