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