K2 blackpearl Gesturing on VS Design Canvas

In the K2 blackpearl Designer for Visual Studio you can use mouse “gestures” to populate the design canvas, instead of dragging/dropping elements from the toolbox.  For example, you can draw an “S”, and have it get converted into a new Default Server Event on the process canvas.

 

A more useful application of the gesturing technique is adding a Line between activities by simply drawing the line from one activity to another.

 

To use this technique, you first right-click the canvas.  The mouse turns into a ink pen like pointer.  You then draw with the mouse (or pen on a Tablet PC) and release the right-click when done.  The drawn letter will convert into one of the elements from the toolbox, or execute a wizard corresponding to one of the elements.   I couldn’t find this gesturing approach documented anywhere, and after playing with it for a little while I discovered the following gestures and corresponding toolbox element:

A,H,W - Default Server Event (Workflow)
C - Default Client Event
D,F,P - InfoPath Integration Process
M - Mail Event
O - Default Activity
S - Default Server Event (Code)

I found this whole gesturing approach much easier to use on a Tablet PC with a pen vs. trying to draw with a mouse - especially anything with curves.  The gesturing is pretty picky about how you draw the letters.  In fact I’m not sure D, F, and P are all really letters intended for the InfoPath Integration Process.  I may have just happened to draw them all similar to a “P”.  It seemed to follow more of a Graffiti convention to scribing letters than a handwritten one.  There were times when I tried to draw an “M” in a handwriting style where it would run the InfoPath Integration Process wizard instead of creating a Mail Event.

I’m not sure how much I’ll remember the gestures and make use of this when authoring K2 processes, except for when drawing lines between activities.  I do think this is a fascinating UI approach, and can achieve some great efficiencies given the right scenario.  I’d love to see other Visual Studio designers make use of this (e.g., draw buttons on a Windows Form design canvas with a “b”).