From: Behnam (behnam.rassi@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Apr 29 2007 - 16:46:43 CST
I fully agree with your second point and your first point also is a
very good one and I didn't think of it that way. But I'm not quite
convinced that for a touch typist, looking at the keyboard is more
convenient than navigating with the mouse. Memorizing the shortcut
key combinations specially those most in use, seems to me to be the
ultimate choice of users. This may look as 'power user' behavior but
it is not. As 'touch typing' was the behavior of professional typists
but it is increasingly becoming the common practice.
B.
On 29-Apr-07, at 5:37 PM, Adam Twardoch wrote:
> Behnam wrote:
>> Optimus keyboard is particularly useful for those who have
>> multilingual use. Particularly those who don't use other languages
>> frequently enough to memorize the location of characters on the
>> keyboard. For the rest of us, it's just a fancy shiny device that
>> provides no performance advantages whatsoever.
> The greatest advantage of the Optimus keyboard is not about
> inputting text but about operating the computer as a whole.
> Currently, the user has to use the mouse perform various tasks, and
> only power-users use keyboard shortcuts to evoke some operations,
> because the user needs to memorize the keyboard shortcuts and their
> functions.
>
> Pressing buttons is a very natural operation for the user. Using
> the mouse to navigate on an artificial "desktop" and press virtual
> buttons (i.e. the icons) is an extra level of complexity: instead
> of using your fingers to press buttons, you're using your hand to
> navigate a virtual finger to press virtual buttons.
>
> If you compare the speed of typing using the real keyboard vs. the
> speed of typing when an on-screen keyboard operated by the mouse is
> used, we instantly realize that typing on the real keyboard is
> faster and better. Analogically, pressing real buttons with the
> real finger should be better than pressing virtual buttons using a
> virtual finger operated by the mouse. Instead of pressing "Ctrl+W"
> to close a tab, people will simply press "Close tab" or "Ctrl+Close
> tab". It's like the F1-F10 function keys but better. Instead of
> having to remember that F1 invokes Help, the user will simply be
> able to press a button named Help.
>
> And obviously, each application will be able to "paint" the
> keyboard buttons according to its own needs and the functionality
> offered.
>
> Johannes Bergerhausen wrote:
>> But the concept of having some sort of soft buttons
>> (like on the forthcoming iPhone) instead of hard buttons fixed
>> in plastic could be a good idea for multilingual users.
> The problems of "soft buttons" is that they're not as palpable as
> "hard buttons". A good keyboard button is optimized to offer a
> perfectly comfortable sensory response (audible and palpable). With
> enough feedback coming through the eyes and the fingers, the human
> can lay the eyes on something else.
>
> With an on-screen virtual keyboard, even on a touch screen, this
> comfort is not there. When pressing onto touchscreen "buttons", you
> need to look carefully where you are pressing. On a keyboard made
> of real buttons, it's much easier to navigate with your fingers.
> One should remember that the sensory abilities of human fingers are
> very high, so touching feeds a lot of information into one's brain.
> A combined look-and-feel user interaction is much better than one
> only based on looking.
>
> A.
>
> --
>
> Adam Twardoch
> | Language Typography Unicode Fonts OpenType
> | twardoch.com | silesian.com | fontlab.net
>
>
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