Publisher Summary This chapter presents an overview of Freestyle system. The system was designed to capture synchronized pointing, speaking, drawing, and writing with electronic versions of familiar tools such as paper, pencil, and voice handset/speaker-phone. People simultaneously use combinations of real world versions of these tools to communicate with each other in the initial stages of almost all work. The design of this system was based on a combination of original ideas and discovery of needs through laboratory and field research. It was partially driven by a theory of user's communication needs and by a particular approach to graphics design based on real-world mimicry. Freestyle was designed to be a voice and handwriting based communication system that sits on top of the current world of personal computing. It leaves intact the DOS operating system and PC software used for calculation, typing, or record keeping. This chapter outlines how various contributions to the design were interwoven as it evolved over time from an initial prototype through multiple versions that were tested in business environments.
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