IDEA Dictionary Pen Concept [Curious Fusion of Traditional and Modern]

We have, it must be said, pondered this Dictionary Pen Concept from IDEA Product Design for a while and, though we’ve tried to fight the underlying feeling that it just doesn’t quite gel, ultimately we have to succumb to the unavoidable conclusion that, whilst the idea may, on paper, seem reasonably sound, in practice it fails to impress.

The Dictionary Pen Concept, as its name suggests, comes with inbuilt dictionary that, paired with the pen’s speech recognition, allows the pen to display your spoken text on the screen free of any possible spelling errors. Interesting, however, this Dictionary Pen doesn’t, as far as we can tell, offer speech to text conversion allowing the uploading the resulting text to a PC (though such a feature would, in fairness, to a large degree, negate the integrated pen functionality from the word go).

But, really, this is where the design fails. It tries to offer a helping hand but, in falling short of offering quite as much help as it otherwise might (which, as per above, would make the integrated pen virtually redundant anyway) it seems, to just at least, to come across as somewhat more of a mere curiosity than a practical and desirable writing aid.

Akin, as far as we’re concerned, to integrating LCD displays in chopsticks to advise of the angle they’re being held at, the Dictionary Pen just strikes us as an interesting but, ultimately somewhat lame attempt at fusing the traditional with the modern in a manner that doesn’t quite promise to deliver any more than what’s already out their (voice to text technologies are far more practical and of far greater assistance) and, once again seemingly, merely for the sake of it.

We will, of course, be fascinated to see quite how you feel about this concept – as reflected in your subsequent voting – but, for us at least, this wholly fails to inspire.

[idea + yanko]

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