Ang Peregrino Recommends 90: Sapiens

Sapi­ens
URL: http://​www​.donelleschi​.com/​s​a​p​i​e​ns/

This is one of the coolest Mac apps around and I’m using it right now. I’ve used the dock which is native to the mac, and I remem­ber using Rocket Doc way back when I used a Win­dows PC. But SAPIENS is def­i­nitely the next evo­lu­tion­ary step in appli­ca­tions launchers.

Sapi­ens is an appli­ca­tion launcher, it helps you access all the appli­ca­tions in your Mac. Sapi­ens is clever because it learns from you, so unlike any other launcher it pre­dicts the appli­ca­tions you will likely need and offers a visu­al­iza­tion of this pre­dic­tion in an intu­itive way.
Sapi­ens is acti­vated by mov­ing the mouse in a cir­cle (yes, it is a mouse ges­ture that finally works), there­fore touch­ing the key­board is really the last resort to be used in case you want to search for a spe­cific application.

Sapi­ens was cre­ated because we rec­og­nize that users are tired of launch­ing appli­ca­tions by typ­ing (whether by using Spot­light or any other keyboard-based launcher). These launch­ers make us feel like we’re back in the ’80’s when the key­board was the only input device.

Every­one wants to have visual access to their favorite appli­ca­tions, but it’s inef­fi­cient and frus­trat­ing to orga­nize appli­ca­tions in dif­fer­ent fold­ers or in dif­fer­ent docks. Life is too short, and there’s not enough time to waste fight­ing against the entropy of the sys­tem. It is a visual tool that pre­dicts the appli­ca­tions you will want to launch and lays out the application’s icons in way that makes inter­ac­tion with the mouse simul­ta­ne­ously intu­itive and revolutionary.

Sapi­ens has been designed around four design principles:

1. intel­li­gence
2. mouse access
3. search as a last resort
4. kines­thetic memory

Intel­li­gence

The aver­age Mac user has about 100 appli­ca­tions installed in his/her sys­tem, but only a third has been used to some extent, and just a tenth is used reg­u­larly. Sapi­ens can accu­rately learn and under­stand the appli­ca­tions you use and is there­fore able to make reli­able pre­dic­tions about the set of appli­ca­tions you are most likely to launch. For this rea­son it may take 2–3 days for it to have a enough brain power to make accu­rate pre­dic­tions. And of course as your habits change sapi­ens keeps adapt­ing to them by con­stantly learn­ing from you.

Mouse Access

We would like to achieve what we call a “launch at first sight expe­ri­ence”. Our eyes are extremely fast and can find the right icon in a few mil­lisec­onds, pro­vided the icons are vis­i­ble and there are not too many on screen. Because Sapi­ens knows what appli­ca­tions you are likely to launch (see intel­li­gence), it can show you the few icons that you really care about.

Given these premises, we also need a way to acti­vate Sapi­ens with the mouse. If we would use a key­board short­cut such as control-space for exam­ple, we could just as well per­form a stan­dard search since our hands are on the key­board already. Because we want you to solely use the mouse we came up with an inno­v­a­tive way to invoke Sapi­ens: a mouse ges­ture. To acti­vate Sapi­ens you can sim­ply move your mouse in a cir­cle until Sapi­ens appears.

This mouse ges­ture also opens a new era of drag & drop. If you want to open a file with a spe­cific appli­ca­tion, sim­ply drag the file and move the mouse in cir­cle. Sapi­ens will be acti­vated and you will be able to drag your file over the appli­ca­tion you want to open the file with.

Obvi­ously you can enable a key­board short­cut too, but we encour­age you to use the mouse cir­cle acti­va­tion to access Sapiens.

Search as Last Resort

Sapi­ens will try pre­dict to the appli­ca­tions you want to launch, but it may not always be 100% cor­rect. Espe­cially at the begin­ning when you are using Sapi­ens for the first time and Sapi­ens hasn’t learned much from your habits, you may want to search. search­ing is very easy: by sim­ply begin­ning to type at any­time, you will prompt a search field to show up and the result will come as you type. Sapi­ens searches for sub­strings also. For exam­ple, if you type “cal”, both iCal and Cal­cu­la­tor will be found. It also searches for abbre­vi­a­tions, for exam­ple if you search for “TE”, TextE­dit will show up.

If you want to visu­ally browse your appli­ca­tions, you can also use the mouse scroll wheel (or the arrow-keys) to move through your applications.

Kines­thetic Memory

The lay­out in which appli­ca­tions are shown is radial and is not as ran­dom as it might seem. You can think about it as a solar sys­tem in which the icons rep­re­sent plan­ets and satellites.

Each appli­ca­tion is asso­ci­ated with a radial cat­e­gory and there­fore will be always in the same radial posi­tion. For exam­ple the Pre­view appli­ca­tion is always at the top in the default lay­out called “Trin­ity”. This fixed posi­tion of the appli­ca­tions is very impor­tant because it helps you develop what is known as Kines­thetic Mem­ory. This is a form of learn­ing in which your body pas­sively remem­bers ges­tures and actions by per­form­ing them. A good exam­ple of Kines­thetic Mem­ory can be found the way we use key­boards (of com­put­ers or cell­phones): we type right but we don’t really know where the spe­cific keys are.

As you start using Sapi­ens every­day, you will real­ize that your eyes look for a spe­cific appli­ca­tion in spe­cific posi­tion. For exam­ple you will always look at the top for the Pre­view appli­ca­tion, or at the bot­tom right for iPhoto.

The way appli­ca­tions are asso­ci­ated to a radial cat­e­gory is immutable and it is the same on every sin­gle Mac, whether you are using your home iMac or your friend’s Mac­Book. It doesn’t mat­ter: your Kines­thetic Mem­ory will help you find what you are try­ing to launch.