the keyboard on the competition

Peter A Trotter peter.trotter at gmail.com
Thu Jun 28 16:32:00 CEST 2007


On 28/06/07, Fabien <fleutot+openmoko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/28/07, Robin Paulson <robin.paulson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > someone on this list had a similar idea for enlarging number keys i
> > think, they would appear or resize depending on context iirc?
> > http://www.apple.com/iphone/usingiphone/keyboard_large.html
>
>
> That's shiny and beautiful, but of limited use: the key becomes bigger
> *after* it's been hit, too late to help the user aiming. Well, actually it's
> still got a practical use: it helps notice when one hits the wrong key (I
> guess no human being could type without looking at the keyboard on an
> iphone).
>

This immediately made me think of enlarging keys on a predictive basis. Not
sure it is that useful but it was an amusing thought.

-Pete

A more interesting track would be some sort of transparent full-screen input
> device: something that lets you see your text, but also lets you use the
> whole touch surface to type more accurately. Besides, that would be one of
> the extremely few cases where transparency effects improve usability instead
> of hurting it :)
>
> If you want to go further, you can combine fullscreen-ness with motions,
> instead of simply touches, thus augmenting the number of immediately
> accessible symbols, or reducing the required level of accuracy. There was a
> startup, a couple of years ago, which produced a very cool (soft or hard)
> input device, based on a 3x3 grid, which was fast, mnemotechnically friendly
> and easy to implement. Unfortunately, they're out of business, I can't
> remember their name and they aren't listed on the openmoko wiki. If anyone
> has a better memory...
>
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