Joshua Penick
Stephen Morrow
Reference Information
Paul H. Dietz, Benjamin Eidelson, Jonathan Westhues and Steven Bathiche, UIST’09, October 4–7, 2009, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Summary
The main idea for this article was for this team to create a keyboard that could also incorporate pressure as an input to the computer along with ASCII lettering. The team began by creating the best possible keyboard first and then went to adding in the pressure sensors. This could aid in some programs where emotion would want to be conveyed. For example instant messaging programs could possibly use this to show more of what the person's mood is when 'speaking'. Another example would be in gaming. The keyboard could aid in telling the program how fast the user wants to run or how hard they want to shoot etc. More importantly however is the application in general typing situations. When typing on a normal keyboard at a fast pace, the user might accidentally strike a wrong key and this must be corrected. The pressure sensitive keyboard could tell that the wrong key was pressed at a much lower pressure than the other keys and then assumes that this was a possible mistake and corrects.
Discussion
The idea of this keyboard at first did not make much sense. The idea of the keyboard is more or less reached its maximum potential. However, using it as a way to sense if the user has accidentally struck a key is a very interesting idea. Also, this idea is very plausible and could be implemented and sold in a very short amount of time. Also in this groups implementation, the new circuitry will actually rid the problem of 'ghosting' from the old keyboards.
I agree that this is an interesting idea, and I also like the idea of it recognizing when we hit a wrong key. However, I'm not sure how quickly people would want to switch over to this device since it would require us to relearn part of the process we use when we type. I can see myself accidentally hitting a key and hitting backspace out of habit even if this corrected the error for me.
ReplyDeleteConcerning the accidental key press, I feel that it would do more harm than good to correct it unless I had used this type of keyboard for a long time. I don't think it would work if I were going back and forth between this keyboard and a classical keyboard. Let me explain: When I make a mistake, I know not only because I can see the mistyped letter on the screen. If I shut my eyes and type, I can usually tell when I inadvertently press a key. I feel as though I would try to go back and retype that word which would not work.
ReplyDelete