Donna is the assistant built into Nexus Pen. You press the button, ask a question out loud, and the answer appears on the pen's color display a couple of seconds later.
That's the whole interaction. There's no app to open and no screen to unlock, which is the point.
What asking Donna actually looks like
Press and hold the button on the barrel. Speak normally, you don't need to phrase things carefully or say a wake word. Release. The answer appears on the display, and you can have it read aloud through the pen's speaker if you'd rather listen.
If the answer runs long, the text scrolls. Small displays are a real constraint, so Donna is tuned to answer in a few sentences rather than the essay a chat window would give you. For most questions asked mid-class or mid-meeting, a few sentences is what you wanted.
Modes change the answer, not just the label
Donna runs in five modes, and the mode genuinely changes how she responds.
Answer, direct factual questions. Short, specific, no preamble.
School, homework and study. Explains the reasoning rather than just handing over a result, because a worked answer you can't reproduce on a test is worth nothing.
Research, deeper questions where you want context and competing views rather than a single confident sentence.
Creative, brainstorming, drafting, and getting unstuck. Looser, generates options instead of one answer.
Language, practice and translation, with pronunciation help and explanations of why a construction works, not just what it means.
Ask the same question in answer mode and school mode and you get genuinely different responses. That's deliberate. A general-purpose assistant has to guess what kind of answer you want; telling it up front is faster than explaining every time.
What Donna remembers
On Plus and Pro, Donna keeps a running memory of what you've asked. Ask about a topic on Tuesday, come back Thursday, and she has the thread. For studying a subject across weeks, this is the difference between a search engine and something that knows what you're working on.
You can turn it off. Some people want a blank slate every time, and that's a legitimate preference.
What Donna is not
She isn't always listening. There's no wake word and no ambient microphone, the mic opens when you hold the button and closes when you let go. This is partly a battery decision and mostly a privacy one. An always-on microphone in a classroom is not a product anyone should ship.
She isn't a note-taking device. Nexus Pen doesn't digitize your handwriting. It's a real pen with real ink, and the ink stays on the paper.
She isn't a replacement for a laptop. Long documents, file analysis, and extended back-and-forth all belong on a bigger screen. Donna is for the questions you have while your hands are already busy writing.
For younger students
If the user is under 13, Nexus Pen requires verifiable parental consent before the account becomes active, a birthdate gate at signup, a consent request to a parent, and consent-status tracking on the account. This is what COPPA requires in the US, and it was built in before launch rather than bolted on afterward.
Parents and teachers can also lock which modes are available. A school account can be restricted to school mode only.
Why "Donna"
Because a pen you talk to needs a name, and "the assistant" is a mouthful when you're asking it something in the middle of a lecture.
Donna ships in every Nexus Pen. Free accounts include answer and school modes; Plus and Pro add research, creative, language, and persistent memory.