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Carnegie Mellon Offers Wee QWERTY Texting Tech For Impossibly Tiny Devices
coondoggie writes "If smartwatches and other ultra-small devices are to become the text generators of the future, their diminutive keyboards are going to have to be way more useful for, um, big fingered typists. Carnegie Mellon researchers may have the answer to that problem. Called ZoomBoard, the text entry technique is based on the iconic QWERTY keyboard layout."
The zoom board paper (PDF) has details. Entering a letter becomes a multi-step process; first you mash the general area of the keyboard containing the letter you want, and eventually it becomes large enough to hit. Test subjects managed to hit 9.3wpm after practice, versus 4.5 wpm for people trying to peck on a teeny-tiny virtual keyboard. They were inspired at least in part by the venerable Dasher input method.
People should just learn Morse code, only one button. It's the original text message tech.
And good Morse code operators go vastly faster than a mere 9.3 world per minute.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I've never really sat down and assessed how slowly I type on a phone, but 9.3 wpm is more than a factor of 10 from my keyboard typing speed. Why have we decided that stupid tiny keyboards are a good idea?
Slashdot, you are now the one and only, lonely, single entry on the "watching a recast of yesterdays news unfold" category of bookmarks.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Why not get rid of the keyboard altogether and have voice control?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Love seeing all the old fogies retire and a bunch of hipster faggots replace them. We can see technology moving backwards as expected.
The fucking iPhone soft keyboard is the shittiest piece of shit ever. The fact they don't scroll the text input dialog until you stop typing was added to increase the annoyance and to ensure backwards movement in usability.
The summary on this story sums it all up. Sounds like a total fucking cluster fuck just to put some novelty e-waste shovel-ware garbage on the market.
You go to such great fucking lengths to improve the input capabilities, and it's still shit. Maybe you should go back to the fucking drawing board. Better yet, through the fucker out because a "smart watch" is a stupid idea as long as it's taking input from a fucking hacked up keyboard.
NO FUCKING WAY! Captcha: teletype
So to sumarise: Someone improved something that you don't want and don't use and that didn't impress you.
Smartwatches? Keyboards? Time to resurrect the Timex/Sinclair brand!
Proverbs 21:19
This is guaranteed to screw up people's ability to accurately place their fingers.
Same reason I turn off AutoCorrect -- because when the user can just wave and poke at the approximate area of the keyboard -- and get the right letter supplied -- the brain fuzzes over its map of the keyboard and the finger placement becomes imprecise. Or rather exactly precise enough to get the desired result -- which is pretty damn sloppy when the computer's taking care of the final accuracy.
'oogle brain mapping dystonia -- lots of academic work on this, it's a serious problem.
Sorry, CMU, this is going to cripple people if you implement it.
Not right away, it'll take some time before the damage is apparent.
I type so fast using Swype it's almost no different from being at my desktop. Longer words are actually easier to input -- the gesture based system works remarkably well alongside some sort of personalized/learning algorithms.
Isn't it amazing how great the advancement of technology is for device usability! Now people can type at an amazing *9.3* words per minute! It's hard to imagine how we ever got by back in the old days, when a casual typist could only achieve 30-60 WPM --- uphill through the snow both ways barefoot. Progress!
If the computer's good enough to get the right letter out of a vague approximation of position on a mini keyboard, it ought to be able to read my handwriting.
Want to do input on a tiny little area or just by waving your hands in the air?
Penmanship. Just make the computer able to read handwriting.
but I'm sure hopeful there are better input methods than this!
Hand writing recognition has been a reality in mobile device for at least the last ten years. Probably longer but I couldn't cite a source if I was asked. It wasn't a bad idea when people were carrying around PDAs but with today's smartphones the stylus is a drag.
The ability for a smartphone to translate handwriting isn't the problem, the form factor of the phone and people's endless desire to carry less is.
I preferred Thumbscript myself. True it only works for a certain number of languages since it is based on 3-digit combinations for glyphs. (well, 2 since everything goes through the middle, for the most part)
Image of the basic idea here
It could be expanded on BY adding 3 digit combinations as well, but it would also increase complexity.
You could probably dynamically show characters you could create from the current button press to the next button press, but that'd get really complex.
In the similar idea behind Dasher, you could use smaller and smaller letters the deeper they are. (I loved dasher as well. Dasher is fantastic.)
I made an implementation on numpad to see how well it worked and it wasn't half bad. Took a little while to get used to, but quite a few keys were shaped like the movements on the 3x3 grid, which helped.
And for those who might want an implementation, I cannot right now, but here is a similar one on AHK forums that doesn't look that bad.
AHK forums - thumbscript beta
It is an old post though. And I think AHK went through a huge change in syntax a while back, but not sure if it was before or after this post was made. I think, by looking through the syntax of the code in question, it should work.
On screen keyboards suck, period.
Having to tap several times to get to the key you want is a nuisance. This will be the one thing that ruins any new smart watch device, assuming you must type text on the screen using a keyboard to interact with it.
At some point you have to accept that just because it has a screen and processor in it along with wireless communications does not mean it has to become a social platform or even one that requires text input.
If app designers for new smartwatch devices are thinking about solutions for how to solve on-screen typing they have already failed. There is a reason why phones are moving to larger and larger screens because people find text input on smaller screens a horrendous experience. A small 2" watch screen is not going to have any adequate method for text input, so don't bother with the functionality.
I don't see why we need smart watches, but we need them even less as a social/texting platform.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Also, writing a letter takes a lot more effort than pressing a key.
The old Palm watch came with a tiny stylus that let you write on the touch screen using their Graffiti system. A normal palm had a separate part of the screen for writing. The watch has some why of switch the screen from tapping mode to writing mode.
For the size of the displays in the paper would a simple box for tracing letters and better handwriting recognition software be better?
Around the mid to late nineties, Sony made a mobile phone called the CM-RX100. It was pretty innovative for it's time. It was one of the smallest mobile phones you could get at the time, utilizing a flip-down boom mic to save space. But the most unique feature of the phone IMHO was a scroll-wheel, similar to the wheel on your mouse, that was located on the side of the phone. You used it to scroll through menus, and you pressed the wheel down to select a menu item. It was very effective, and allowed pretty quick navigation through the system. If this was utilized to enter text, by scrolling through a visual alphabet wheel, and then pressing to select the letter or symbol, it could result in a quick input method without sacrificing the already limited screen real-estate on a smartwatch.
...the Masher input method. ;-)
...except that, instead of hitting the same key a variable number of times, you'll be hitting the screen multiple times (i.e. until you manage to focus in on your target). Perfectly do-able, but not ergonomically ideal.
To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now
Why use a keyboard when you can use Siri?
Using the input method of a bulky device (whose letters were ordered that way to not let you write too fast to avoid jamming of mechanical parts) with fixed letter positions for very high tech, digital small devices, with no mechanical parts that could jam could not be the best approach.
Maybe entry could be arranged like in compressing algorithms, having the most common letters and words right at your reach (few bits/touches) and you could navigate to more uncommon ones that fits in your input. Or handwritting recognition, but with extended "alphabet" (where you can have different gestures for i.e. common words). Or hardware keyboards with soft keys.
Since it seems people are demanding bigger and bigger screens (heck, The day phones were bigger than penises came a month ahead of schedule), this seems to be a technology looking for a reason to exist - given the popularity of big screen phones (and the Galaxy Mega is no slouch) and how people seem to want bigger screen phones, it seems the problem will solve itself naturally. Well before it starts appearing in products, anyhow.
Just suprised no-one has thought of this solution before. Acedemics, pfft!
BTW, speaking of marvel and CMU: isn't today or tomorrow the judge expected to rule on that $1B patent-infringement claim: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/12/27/1344231/jury-hits-marvell-with-1-billion-fine-over-cmu-patents.
"the most common letters and words right at your reach"
MessagEase Keyboard on Android does exactly this. I've never looked back to ridiculous QWERTY since trying it. Takes a bit of getting used to, but worth every minute. One thumb operation is easy even on a Galaxy Note; it is a tiny square and highly adjustable, it does not have elaborate alternative keyboards for numbers etc, and it is in the Guinness Book of Records at 84 wpm. QWERTY on a small screen? It is like putting tractor tyres on a Ferrari.
I've found phone-sized on-screen keyboards almost completely unusable. So much so that I tote around a Bluetooth keyboard with my phone when I think I'll have cause to enter a lot of text. What is with this trend of making devices' input options so fucking horrible? Remind me why we did away with the rather elegant solution of using styluses on touch screens?
And to anyone who says "use speech recognition"? It doesn't work for me. I get atrocious (70%+/-) accuracy with it due to my gravelly voice.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
That 'hit key and choose the letter option that comes up' is how Chinese computer users have to navigate our QWERTY keyboards. SInce Chinese has many characters, hitting any letter on a keyboard brings up a choice of characters on menus that go deeper and deeper. That's the way I understand it but, of course, any readers who've had experience can correct me.
Yep, MessagEase is awesome. But when I found out that the Palm Graffitti is available an Android I switched to that.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.