
Joystick-like Input Method for Smartwatches - druidsbane
http://www.gierad.com/projects/smartwatch5dof/
======
habosa
Makes me wonder how many other interfaces are horribly wrong because everyone
has just accepted them. I didn't really think there would be many ways to
interact with a smartwatch besides touchscreen and side buttons. And then
someone played DOOM on one better than I could do it on my Android phone.
Reminds me of how I felt when I first saw pinch to zoom on a capacitive touch
screen and realized that it was so natural.

I think one area where people are always doing experiments like this is
Android soft keyboards. I've seen so many wacky ways to input text, and some
actually work pretty well.

Also today MSFT announced that keyboard research project with gestures, good
day for alternative interfaces.

~~~
minikomi
I feel like "flick input" for Japanese on smartphones is actually very very
intuitive once you get used to it. I think it will adapt well to this
interface too.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-za9LT_30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-za9LT_30)

I've been wondering lately if someone could adapt it to English, with perhaps
phonetic groups? Lit swype - it's tricky when you first try it, but soon
becomes second nature.

~~~
sirsar
MessageEase[0] is remarkably similar. Instead of phonetic groups, it puts the
most used letters in the easiest locations. With practice, I got my typing
speed up to about 40 WPM on it, but I ultimately switched back to Google
Keyboard due to the lack of a good autocorrect and prediction system.

[0] [http://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php](http://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php)

~~~
mjcohen
People have done over 70 wpm with the Fitaly keyboard on Palm devices. See
here: [http://www.fitaly.com/](http://www.fitaly.com/)

------
zan2434
This makes so much sense. The screen isn't big enough to be interacted with
directly, but interacting with the media on the screen using the body of the
device is brilliant.

~~~
qxi
I feel like this is something that traditional watch designers have known
about for a long time. A modern adventuring watch is packed with a slew of
chrono/navigation features, yet they're all accessible through the bezel or
buttons around the case.

------
dang
This is a great post that looks like it's falling through the cracks. I
suggest you repost it later (you may need to use a slightly different url).
When a solid story hasn't yet had significant attention, a small number of
reposts are ok.

Edit: Never mind—it didn't fall through the cracks after all, which is great.

~~~
noir_lord
> a small number of reposts are ok.

Call me cynical but I have a horrible feeling you might regret that statement.

That said it is a nice approach to the problem :).

~~~
dang
It's a balancing act between not wanting lame reposts and not wanting to miss
solid articles. Currently, things have trended a bit too far toward missing
solid articles.

Usually I add something like: Please don't overdo it. Accounts that repost
excessively eventually lose submission privileges. Deleting and reposting is
particularly bad—that's an abuse of deletion.

~~~
jacquesm
> Deleting and reposting is particularly bad—that's an abuse of deletion.

Maybe augment the guidelines to that effect? Right now it is a feature, one
man's use is another mans overdoing it.

~~~
dang
We'll do that eventually, but I'm hesitant to change the guidelines very much
just yet.

Also, I think it's a mistake to overspecify the rules. We want HN to be a
spirit-of-the-law kind of place. A lot of these details can be derived pretty
easily from the core values, like "intellectually substantive posts". Accounts
that abuse reposting and deletion are almost always just promoting stuff,
which is not the same as posting what one personally finds deeply interesting.

But I'm just thinking out loud here. Probably a bad idea. :)

~~~
noir_lord
> But I'm just thinking out loud here. Probably a bad idea. :)

Still better than not thinking quietly ;).

------
joyeuse6701
Very cool, I feel like when we thought smartwatch, we all thought of another
smaller iphone or touch device. This interface is much more in line with
actual watches. It's great

------
sebular
Love the video.

It made me think about all of the empty space on a smart watch that could be
used more effectively. Buttons or touch surfaces could be built into the wrist
strap, and perhaps an alternate location for a joystick like this would be on
the opposite side of your wrist from where the screen is positioned.

Now, if only there was a way to cram a halfway-decent typing experience into
one of those things...

~~~
scdc
instead of typing into it, voice recognition is perfect here.

------
Timothee
_unfortunately, due to the placement on the wrist, they must be small_

I don't know if they're small because they're on the wrist or because they're
sold as watches.

I don't think I'd be against having a bigger screen on my wrist like control
panels that have been seen in SciFi shows for many years :) Something smaller
than an iPhone, but maybe like the iPod Nano would work.

I wouldn't be surprised to see them appear soon. Sometimes, I feel that I
could use my iPhone on my arm rather than my pocket, when walking for example.
But the smart watches tend to have too little screen real estate.

~~~
vertex-four
iPhone arm bands definitely exist: [http://mashable.com/2012/02/05/best-
iphone-armbands/](http://mashable.com/2012/02/05/best-iphone-armbands/)

~~~
Timothee
Certainly, but I think iPhones are too big to be used on a wrist and existing
armbands are usually for workouts and for your arm, rather than forearm or
wrist.

More importantly, the UI is not done for that use. For example, you might want
to lock down the orientation to have the bottom always be towards your body.
Apps would also need to be very different, because you'd use it as some kind
of dashboard.

------
martin-adams
Very nice concept and I think I can really see this taking off. You can then
use it as a remote device to larger screens as you wouldn't need to look down
at the watch. It reminds me very much of the 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse[1]

My only minor criticism with the demo is the click to take a photo. This would
be disastrous as usually people are in low light conditions, it would make you
move your hand (and thus camera) and it would introduce camera shake.

[1]
[https://www.3dconnexion.co.uk/index.php?id=352](https://www.3dconnexion.co.uk/index.php?id=352)

------
Hytosys
Everything looks great! Except the click gesture. Besides warping the LCD
(which would admittedly be mounted better in production), it seems like
there's an unavoidable amount of strain on both wrists. Still, very cool! It's
amazing how many awful interfaces we work with on a daily basis that could use
some love like this.

------
tonylemesmer
Could this be expanded to smartphones? A pressure sensitive bezel to avoid
occluding the screen for simple interactions and eliminating buttons but
having regions for input.

~~~
Pxtl
Honestly, I've always wanted an unbound (so it's free for apps to use)
sensitive strip along one long edge of my smart phone that could be used for
jog/seek operations in videos without blocking the screen, as L/R buttons for
gaming, etc.

------
ifelsethen
slightly different concept (but too neat to not share):

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pacosal.sw...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pacosal.sw.joystick)

praise to sony for supplying an SDK for the Smartwatch platform that enables
devs to create their own software!

they also have tools for creating custom firmware. the smartwatch should have
the sensors necessary for someone to make this happen (mostly) on existing
hardware.

------
Pxtl
The "click" operation looks clumsy - I'd rather just have some buttons along
the edge. But the twist/nudge stuff looks great.

------
artificialidiot
So the whole watch body acts as a nipple mouse... Got it.

~~~
rm445
It has more degrees of freedom.

------
zackmorris
Introducing the iPod Watchie

