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Microsoft's Adaptive Touchscreen Keyboard
ramandeeps noted a Microsoft research project on an adaptive keyboard that is essentially a touchscreen that updates to make it easier to keep complex keybindings to a minimum. This is part of the 2010 Student Innovation Contest, so if you want one and happen to be a student, you can sign up to do research on the device.
Haven't we seen this before?
I'm not only referring to having seen this kind of technology in a keyboard before.
I am also asking, have we not seen before, time and time again, Microsoft copying someone else's technology and claiming it to be their own major exclusive new super-invention? ...
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
its just a Optimus Maximus Keyboard, thats smaller, and got a touch screen on top, and theres not a whole lot of inovation you can do with a fixed keyboard, even if it is "adaptive"
The goal of the contest is to develop new interactions on unique hardware that you cannot get anywhere else. We supply you with the special hardware and you show us how innovative you can be with it. ...
To reserve a place in the contest and to receive an Adaptive keyboard for development, contestants must submit an entry email to the contest chair no later than August 17th, 2010.
You also have to return the keyboard by October, so it's not yours forever. http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2010/Student_Contest.html
So when you press Ctrl+Alt the entire keyboard suddenly changes into a big "Delete"?
Explain to me how this is gonna make my Vi editor sessions more productive, and I'll be ready to listen. It seems to me that an adaptive keyboard is a crutch for people who don't want to learn a product well enough to be good at it. I fail to see how having buttons that change with context is really much better than being able to chose the same context with a mouse. Unless you reach that zen level where you stop thinking "Copy the line...press YY..." to just doing it without thinking, then there's not much to be gained.
This is weird. If this is just a keyboard, and I should be focusing my attention on a monitor, then all the eye candy on the keyboard is really a fail. Switching keyboards on the fly is pretty cool, but then the upper screen should be chopped off and the keyboard made smaller.
BUT if there is no monitor, then I have 3/4 of a touchpad devoted to a keyboard, and I can't see a lot of my work above.
Even the Timex Sinclair had a better viewing area: typing area ratio. The keyboard takes two tasks and makes them harder.
This is classic example of coming up with something and then seeking utility for it..
So by looking on the keyboard instead of the screen I now somehow get a productivity increase? How? Isn't the hand in the way somehow? Also, how do I know what I did? Do I have to watch up and down all the time?
Also, I can think it's horribly painful after a while to watch 30 degrees down all the time on your neck.
I think this could be fun for a 5 year old though.
No more trouble finding the any key... it will just turn into one which you can slam with your head.
This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Since I first encountered a computer, looking at the keyboard is what has kept my eyes off my work, not the other way around.
Anyway, I don't see how this strip above the keyboard is too different from a ribbon on the bottom of the screen.
Please tell me that I'm not the only person who thought about LCARS from Star Trek when watching the video. I can see that sort of utility in an industrial environment where your input device changes based on the screen your viewing.
My Sysadmin Blog
The only advantage a keyboard has is that you can use it by feel. This keyboard constantly changes based on context and you have to keep looking at it to see what mode it's in and what options you have. You look at the keyboard, you press a button. Something changes on the screen, you look at the screen. Then you look at the buttons again. Then you press another button. Then you look at the screen again... It's horrible UI design, not to mention ergonomics. If you're going to have a fancy dynamic interface, make it capable enough that you can manipulate objects without constantly referring to another display.
With tactile touchscreens and smarter virtual keyboards on the way, I think true touchscreens are the future of input and a gussied-up mechanical keyboard like this is a dead end. It's too expensive and not capable enough.
Now, if they decided to replace the *mouse* with an iPad-sized trackpad that doubles as a touchscreen work area, then I'd get excited.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Are there a lot of (work?) places where everybody speaks a different language, but nobody speaks a common one?
That's about the only place I would see any real usefulness...
The optimus was a really cool concept but no one bought them because it was so expensive to a have a separate OLED per key! Also, the design led to some very hard keys that were not great for typing. This project allows for the same kind of customization and dynamic features that the optimus offered at what I can only guess as a fraction of the cost.
They'll patent this "innovation" out the wazoo, balls up their own implementation, and then in five years sue Apple when they steal a ten year old Japanese implementation of it. Lawyerzoid, I choose you!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
FTFA:
/.!
http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2010/Student_Contest.html
The current requirements for running the keyboard are below:
1. A computer running Windows Vista or Windows 7. 32-bit only.
So you're required to be nerdy enough to want to enter this this contest and create a demo of your idea, but noob enough to still be running 32-bit? Half of Windows 7 PCs run the 64-bit version
"To reserve a place in the contest and to receive an Adaptive keyboard for development, contestants must submit an entry email to the contest chair no later than August 17th, 2010."
Not much notice
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
The whole point of the contest is to find a use for the keyboard. Perhaps you're not cut out for this sort of competition.
It's likely to cost much more than a real keyboard,
Be slower than a real keyboard,
Cannot be touchtyped (no feedback)
So all the downsides of a touchscreen interface with none of the advantages ....
The Optimus keyboard had the right idea - real keyboard with reconfigurable labels ,,,,
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
You look at the keyboard, you press a button. Something changes on the screen, you look at the screen. Then you look at the buttons again. Then you press another button. Then you look at the screen again... It's horrible UI design, not to mention ergonomics.
Meanwhile, back in the traditional keyboard world, when someone is learning a new application, they look at the manual, then look at the keyboard, and press a button. Something changes on the screen, and they look at the manual, then the screen, then the manual, then the keyboard, and press another button.
A reconfigurable keyboard cuts out the middleman of the documentation when learning a new application. It's not for people who already know every keyboard shortcut in every application they use.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
So you're required to be nerdy enough to want to enter this this contest and create a demo of your idea, but noob enough to still be running 32-bit?
If you are running Windows, you're not a true nerd anyway. :-)
Slashdot readers are expected to be able to invent and code something innovative in a single night. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Jeez. They're actually having a contest to try and find something useful to do with this thing.
It's really true: once institutions gets big enough all they can manage are incremental improvements. Game changing breakthroughs, should they accidently arise internally, are actively put down by beneficiaries of the status quo.
Why not work toward solving a known problem like, say, the miserable state of mobile input technology. The main reason you can't do as much on a smart phone as you can on a desktop computer is your lousy phone keyboard.
10/gui anyone?
http://10gui.com/video/
Somehow I think if this were released by someone more open source friendly, everyone here would be basking in how awesome it is. But since it's put out my Microsoft, everyone shits all over it. Way to never let me down Slashdot.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
You know how stupid Buck Rogers looked to you when you were a kid? That's how stupid Star Wars looks to your kids.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Is this contest what I think it is? A way to come up with ideas about how to market this hardware?
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't diss this keyboard just because it's from MS. I am using Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 v.1, because it has a nice curve up, I type faster with it for real, the insert/home/page up are in one row and under those there are the delete/end/page down and the arrows are correctly underneath that, up is on top, and the three other arrows are in one correct row. Why is all of this important? Because I use the old Borland style shortcuts to cut/copy/insert/delete, most people I worked with can't do any of that as fast, the only problem is that it requires me to release control to select row up or down, the rest is correct.
I can at the very least see how an adaptive keyboard like that can be useful for specialty applications, with key labels changing for every application.
However there are other possibilities, how about taking an image (a picture) and putting a grid on top of it and thus splitting the image into a bunch of rectangles, and then each rectangle has its own part of the image on top of it. Now you can chose parts of the image by touching the correct keys.
Of-course changing from one language to another is obvious.
How about using it to play music, drawing a piano keyboard over the keys?
Things are possible, it's just the contest looks like it is a search of a problem for their solution to use that for marketing.
You can't handle the truth.
Way to re-invent a 20+ year old interpretation of (off the top of my head for the MTV generation):
A: The desk keyboard in Tron
B: The LCARS interface from Star Trek.
I must go back to a very old quote:
"There is noting more amusing then some young kid discovering something old, thinking it's new...."
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
If you are running Windows, you're not a true nerd anyway. :-)
I'd say that your not a true nerd if your running any single OS. Granted, in a OS monoculture Windows might be the least nerdy (though OS X might be, depending on how you look at it), but a true nerd should be playing the field, using the strengths of each OS.
I have an OS X media box, a Windows gaming rig, and an Ubuntu (for now, trying to find the time to find a better distro) work horse laptop.
To make this even sillier (it is an OS pissing contest, silly is the name of the game): Lets say Linux has a nerd value (NV) of 1*, OS X has a NV .5, and Windows has one of .3. Thus a person only running Linux can only ever achieve an NV of 1, where someone multi-OSing can achieve a value of 1.8, which is nerdier than a mere 1.
*Though I'd say more esoteric OSs are worth more, so perhaps a person only using an old Amiga for all their computing needs might beat someone using using all three OSs.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
A correct link for the article above is here.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
As others have pointed out, this isn't so great for productivity, since you must now change your gaze between screens all the time. However, as a tool to help you learn keyboard shortcuts, it's pretty nice.
The productivity tool that might be interesting is a keyboard where, when you hit a special key, converts all the keytops into a large touchpad of sorts for moving the cursor.
But really, what apps need most is just a truly well thought out keyboard interface. Most developers either rely too much on WIMP or the mere fact that some keyboard shortcut may exist, regardless of how difficult to use it may be. For example, using tab/shift-tab as the only way of moving around 100 different selections isn't practical.
I have a Windows developer friend (we all have one), and every now and then he'll come up with some hair brained tweet/email, "see, look at the cool stuff Microsoft is doing!" I got glowing reviews of the Zune, Vista, that Songsmith thing, Surface....and now THIS keyboard... He also informs me the new Internet Explorer is going to "kick ass!" and Windows Phone 7 is "amazing"...
Meanwhile, after spending who knows what into crap like the Zune, Surface and now THIS, why is none of it made into something SUCCESSFUL? Microsoft sees touch sensitive (even if its a strip) screens, and gives the world THIS, or the Surface... meanwhile, Apple, Google, they give us iPhones, iPads and Android devices which are (not quite) literally flying off the shelves!
I'm actually embarrassed for Microsoft at this point, what the hell is wrong with that company? They cant even make quick knockoffs anymore.
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When will they actually consider ergonomics and stop using typewriter style key positioning?