TE.TO.TE

te.to.te is a revolutionary iPad app for sharing ideas. Like a notebook you can use it to draw, write or store images. te.to.te is designed to be used collaboratively: create a note and share it with friends - everything you draw is seen by everyone simultaneously. Start with a PDF and brainstorm new ideas with a colleague, or make a scratch book of photos to share with family.

Credits

Produced by: Kokuyo Furniture Co., LTD. (Kouhei Nojima, Koji Aoki, Hisashi Kano, Wataru Sato, Nobuhiko Otsuki)
Direction: Qosmo, Inc. (Alexander Reeder)
iOS Programming: Qosmo, Inc. (Nao Tokui, Toru Urakawa, Alexander Reeder)
Design: webtron Inc. (Satoshi Omiya, Yuka Namba)
API Programming: SPURS Inc. (Kaoru Yamazaki)
Video: Vanilla, Inc. (Masayuki Iwamoto)
Video Sound: Qosmo, Inc. (Taeji Sawai)

About

te.to.te (pronounced tay-toe-tay, meaning "hand-and-hand" in Japanese) is a take on Professor Hiroshi Ishii's Team Workstation, circa 1990. Google Docs or IDroo are also modern examples implementing realtime collaboration. So how is te.to.te different from what's already out there?

It's on the iPad. Or rather, it takes advantage of the benefits which are inherent in the iPad: a nice screen, touch, and a speedy CPU to name a few. Drawing on an iPad is a very different (many would say better) experience than drawing in a web browser. The iPad is also mobile, easily accessible in environments unsuitable for a PC and convenient to those who are not tech-savvy.

te.to.te isn't about chatting or messaging or drawing per se. It's about collaborating. te.to.te was designed that way from the ground up. That means when you are drawing with another user you see what they are sketching - rendered in realtime. Lines don't abruptly pop up on the screen, they glide, smoothly accompanied with the users' icon - an experience unique to te.to.te. When five people are working on the same page, it feels that way, and you can easily get a sense of who is doing what in a way which doesn't interfere with the experience.

Facilitating collaboration within te.to.te isn't only with the people you know, but those you don't. Notes are designed to be infinite, like a never ending scroll. What's important isn't the conclusion of a note, but the gestalt which emerges when viewing the pages of a note in sequence.

te.to.te makes visualizing the creative process possible. It screams brainstorming. It is useful for projects like renovating an apartment, planning a party or sharing the experiences of a child growing up.

Last but not least te.to.te is also a powerful drawing tool.

Development

te.to.te originated from within Kokuyo Furniture Co., LTD. 5 similarly minded employees from different departments gathered with the desire to initiate an innovative project to strengthen Kokuyo's brand image. The goal was to make a notebook app for the iPad, but it was especially innovative in two ways: first everything would be synced between multiple people in realtime, second the number of pages would be unlimited and easily accessible, like an infinite scroll. With these requirements Kokuyo (Hisano Kano, co-architect of Hotel Kanra) tapped Qosmo, Inc. (Alexander Reeder) to lead development of te.to.te.

For design Satoshi Omiya of webtron was brought in. Together Satoshi and Alexander developed the UI. Nao Tokui, Qosmo's iOS powerhouse, jumped into the challenge of making a beautiful collaborative drawing app. Toru Urakawa and Alexander Reeder assisted in development. One of Nao's innovations was coding a system for tagging stroke data so it was low bandwidth and easily synced between iPads. Another was beautifully rendering users strokes in realtime to give an authentic sense of realtime collaboration. We worked with Kaoru Yamazaki of Spurs, who undertook the API implementation (websocket based).

Earnest development started in September, 2011 and the app was finally released May 23, 2012.

It is our belief that better tools lead to better work.