The Cosmonaut was the first Kickstarter project I contributed to, and it’s also the first I have something to show for. The project reached its funding goal on April 20 thanks to the contributions of more than six thousand backers. Eight months later, I’m holding the end product in my hand.

So how’d it turn out?

The pitch

I’ve been a frequent user of Wacom tablets for years (at one time using a “Penabled” tablet PC as my primary laptop), so my quality bar for styluses is set pretty high… every capacitive stylus I’ve tried has failed to meet my expectations. Because of this, I ignored most of the initial Cosmonaut murmurings on Twitter.

Luckily, Calvin Ross Carl mentioned the campaign to me again, suggesting I at least watch the introductory video.

Despite my initial skepticism, I was impressed by the concept. Instead of attempting to circumnavigate the touchscreen’s limitations to deliver a compromised fine-tip writing tool, Studio Neat embraced the lack of precision, drawing inspiration from dry-erase markers and emphasizing the weight and feel of the object itself. I appreciated that thoughtfulness and forked over a paltry sum for the opportunity to try it firsthand.

The stylus

The Cosmonaut arrived in a stylish-yet-understated cardboard box, the soviet space theme lovingly maintained throughout the presentation. It made me smile.

The stylus itself feels very substantial in the hand. It’s a little heavier than a whiteboard marker, moreso as it comes to a point. I had to look up antonyms for “slippery” to describe its rubberized, outer coating, but “unslippery” is still the best description Thesaurus.com or I could come up with.

The pen tip feels firm and plastic to the touch, but it’s actually squishy and flexible. It’s tough to describe, but a brief tap with the tip of your finger will feel very resistant, whereas a firmer tap and hold will make it flex inward. It’s a surprising combination that makes the stylus feel sturdy and reliable without risking damage to the screen.

In use

I tried the Cosmonaut in my two favorite iPad sketching apps, Adobe Ideas for whiteboard-style doodling and Procreate for painting.

When sketching in Ideas, I found I had to press just a little more firmly than I would have with my finger, but once I learned to do this without trepidation, writing and doodling began to feel natural. While it didn’t feel quite like a dry-erase marker on a whiteboard in terms of effortlessness, I definitely felt my dexterity improve with the stylus.

This improvement was even more noticeable when painting. Procreate’s interface is so well-designed to begin with that, combined with the comfort of the Cosmonaut, I quickly forgot about either tool and just enjoyed the act of making a fun little Mickey Mouse sketch. For me, that’s the mark of a great design… the object disappears, allowing you to focus on the task itself.

The verdict

I feel a strange sense of pride in writing this review. While Studio Neat clearly deserves 99.9% of the credit for the Cosmonaut’s existence, it feels great to have been an early supporter.

This is easily my favorite capacitive stylus. By abandoning the goals of traditional, resistive touchscreen input devices and instead focusing on comfort and contextual appropriateness, they’ve successfully created a useful and charming tool that’s earned a spot on my desk (in the Gorillaz mug, next to my Wacom pen and my favorite mechanical pencil).

Now I just have to count the days until I get to watch Indie Game: The Movie…

10/GUI is a multitouch interface designed to push the typical desktop experience forward with the  “interaction bandwidth” afforded through the use of all ten fingers. It’s smart, inventive and really inspiring.

While Microsoft’s Courier concept is fascinating for its application of touch to a decidedly alternative computing experience, 10/GUI seeks to redefine our desktop interactions. I was pleased to see its creator, R. Clayton Miller, thoughtfully address the issue of arm and neck fatigue (a problem cartoonists like myself know all too well). His solution also counters the challenges of the user’s fingers obscuring the point of interaction, something today’s mobile devices sidestep with clumsy fly-up keypress confirmations.

I think 10/GUI is wonderful, and I sincerely hope Miller (or those industrious enough to seek him out) will explore it further and give us some real products to play with. That being said, I remain unconvinced that this type of interface would work in mainstream application.

While listening to 10/GUI’s daunting list of touch gestures required to accomplish basic operating system tasks, I was reminded of industrial designer Dennis Boyle’s account of Palm’s experience selling users on Graffiti text entry over a traditional keyboard. From Bill Moggridge’s Designing Interactions:

I remember that Handspring decided to put the Treo out with both a keyboard and Graffiti, because they didn’t know which one people would choose; they decided to let them vote. The result was quite clear; a large majority went for the small keyboard. [...] [The] little QWERTY keyboard, bad as it is, is such a standard that it requires no guesswork, and that attracts more users.

Despite the fact that Graffiti was a faster and more efficient method of “typing” on a mobile device, these rewards came only if the user invested enough time to overcome the obstacle of learning the standard. While I find it to be really neat, I can’t imagine gaining enough speed from 10/GUI to overcome the time and pain it would take to learn those gestures.

I’ve experienced this with my MacBook Pro’s multitouch trackpad. While simple gestures like scrolling are easy to learn, more complex maneuvers are bothersome and often unwittingly triggered as my hand brushes past while typing. While some of these features ease the frustration of not having a mouse, they are a poor substitute when used in conjunction with the keyboard, occasionally even to the detriment of my workflow.

I’m not saying we necessarily need to coddle our users, gimping innovation for the sake of complacency. What I am suggesting is that immediacy may be the greatest asset of touch computing. It is natural to select an object by touching it. I love the Courier prototype because it evolves tasks which inherently benefit from touch interaction. 10/GUI appears to require memorization prior to use, more like a musical instrument than a user interface. Put simply, I’m afraid 10/GUI will create more problems for me than it will solve.

But I really hope I’m proven wrong.