Appway and ZHAW Present Smart Pen for Business Process Modeling

Appway cultivates partnerships with educational institutions by assisting with research projects which in turn encourages innovative ideas and, inspires Appway to be an early adapter for new technological trends. Alexandre de Spindler from ZHAW School of Management and Law says “We are less engaged in software development, we rather focus on novel development approaches and their conceptual design. We were intrigued by Appway’s agile model-centric development approach. Appway’s technology is sophisticated yet easy to use.”

Appway’s model-centric approach set the idea for an intelligent smart pen application, which led to a new interactive way of capturing illustrated process schemes on paper. Functions of the pen include the digitalizing of process schemes into process models based on BPMN standard and also allows to interactively use the process after drawing it. And if the digitalized process is printed out, the Smart Pen also enables a round trip engineering process between digital and paper. In the video on www.appway.com/smartpen you get an impression of the smart pen application.

Chief technology officer of Appway, Oliver Brupbacher says that ‘collaborating with institutions like ZHAW helps us to think out the box and ultimately inspires Appway to push technological boundaries. This project in particular has enlightened Appway for the future, providing insights on how application development could evolve and, how the digital and the analog world are seamlessly integrated.’

The research project has prompted Appway to think about how new human interface devices on the market can be integrated in software development. Appway envisions further collaboration and is thinking about how touch functionality of tablet devices could be used and how the design process can be even more agile and collaborative in the work place.