We live in a technological, instant-access world. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embraces the use of technology to fulfill its mission, and BYU is supporting the effort by developing revolutionary technologies for family history.
Computer science professor Bill Barrett and his students Kevin Bauer and Curtis Wigington are developing tools to help make FamilySearch.org easier to use. Their hope is that this will motivate more members to work on their family history.
“Now that everyone has Angry Birds on their smartphones, you’ve got to make family history as easy and as rewarding as flinging birds at some pigs,” Bauer said.
To accomplish this, Bauer has worked alongside Barrett to develop the program Intelligent Pen, which allows a computer to trace over handwriting on documents to determine names and other information.
“With older documents, there’s a lot of trouble that you run into because they’re so degraded and worn out,” Bauer said.
Intelligent Pen will help transform old, faded handwriting into script that is more clear and legible.
Wigington and Barrett have developed another program called Virtual Pedigree, which makes it possible for users to navigate their family tree dynamically with branches expanding and contracting as the data requires. Virtual Pedigree also allows users to view more than one branch of their family tree at once.
“People want things faster. They want it to do it for them. [Virtual Pedigree] helps enhance the experience,” Wigington said.
This process did not come easy. Wigington, Bauer, and Barrett had to solve many puzzles along the way to figure out what would help Intelligent Pen and Virtual Pedigree work best.
Barrett described the process of developing these tools as an act of faith.
“You have no guarantee that this will work. You just believe in the idea. That belief alone will not do it. You’ve got to make it work,” Barrett said. “It’s this idea of taking a step into the darkness and waiting for the light to follow . . . with the idea that there is a solution and you have to go find it.”
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