Monday 26 October 2009

BarCampLondon7: Alternative Input - Striking a Chord

Stephen Nicholas

3rd year project

  • Stephen works with Dale Lane @ IBM on microbroker & GUI testing
  • multitap & mini-qwerty not really suited for mobile input…
    • qwerty not really suited for desktop input either :-)
    • multitap gets up to 20 WPM
  • braille keyboard has one key for each dot
  • can get faster than qwerty keyboard input
    • qwerty 80 wpm
    • stenographers much faster: 200-300 WPM
  • can possibly reduce RSI since not moving your arm quite so much
  • drawbacks:
    • have to use non-obvious input schemes (no hunt and peck)
  • microwriter, introduced in 1978
    • got speeds up to 40 WPM after 7 months practice
    • had great mnemonic method for encoding
    • recently been redeveloped as the CyKey
  • twiddler
    • has 3 x 4 keys, might work well on mobile keyboard
  • ChordTap for phones:
    • has three additional buttons on back of phone to distinguish between multitap letters

2 comments:

T.Mc.Puddock said...

hi, there is also a device called a "frogpad"

T.Mc.Puddock said...

hi nicholas
just found your intro to chord keyboard, great work!
and as a long time user of microwriter, agenda and now cykey (not so found) I love your sugestion regarding a mobile or even netbook with a chord keyboard.
keep up the good work
cheers
michel