I now have three “primary” computing devices: a MacBook pro, an iPad, and an iPhone. The gap at is immediately apparent to me, and that I think is an interesting opportunity is the disconnect of the user experience moving between each of the devices.

The individual devices have great UX. But as I move from one form factor to another most apps make the UX feel disconnected.

Example: I use an IM application on all devices. But if I start s conversation on my MacBook and then pick up my iPad to go into the living room, or my iPhone to run to the store my conversation is broken. The chat history does not follow me, and even worse, multiple devices will remain logged on so a new IM will register on multiple devices.

I think with all of the new and innovative form factors now finding adoption momentum, there is a good opportunity for frameworks to be built to support the movement of the UX in a seamless way across devices.

Pushing data into the cloud, or having a good sync system is a great start, and I’d love if my various apps had better sync capabilities. But can we sync the UX of applications. Can product developers break out of the paradigm of an application living in a single instance of a process. Can UX be elevated to it’s own entity with app instances being merely a view into the current session.

Should my word processor always start from zero when I open it? Or should it return to it’s previous state? If I’m editing a blog post on my laptop and I decide to move to my iPad, should I dare to expect to continue where I left off seamlessly?

It’s a hard problem to solve from a logic perspective, and its a lot of plumbing to write for app developers. Maybe someone will think through the business rules and create a framework we can all build on.

If you are that person, I’d love to talk with you and support you. What do you all think?

Interested in robotics? Brian Peek has published an article about using Microsoft Robotics Studio with the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. This is a great combination for an introduction to robotics for hobbyists or students. This is very similar to a system used by the Females In Science Club that I tutored in programming for the NASA robotics competition they competed in.

I’ve taught many technology classes from elementary kids to high schools students to senior citizens. I’ve taught Internet classes, programming, robotics, computer repair, and general use. Robotics is a great fusion of disciplines from software and hardware. It also provides an entertaining and interactive mechanism for education. If you want to teach or learn technology, for your, your kids, or your class, this is a great starting point.

Robotics Studio has an added benefit of supporting Microsoft Visual Programming Language which provides a graphical environment for creating procedural commands for the robotic control. This is an ideal way to lower the barrier of entry into technology, software, and robotics as it is much simpler than the terse text code that programmers write.

Software is very intangible and can be pretty uninteresting on it’s own. But combined with a physical medium, such as robotics, software can “come alive.” Microsoft and Lego have a great package for the introduction to robotics, and this kit can let you build some other pretty cool things!