
Triangular buttons key to touchscreen typing success - kqr2
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/06/02/crocodile_keyboard/
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GiraffeNecktie
So he's trying to patent the use of triangles for keys? I wonder who nailed
that lucrative square key patent. He must be worth billions by now.

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fortunado
Patenting qualms aside, I think this is a brilliant idea.

I wonder why this hasn't been implemented. I could definitely see using this
format for detection, but then visually using square buttons. Best of both
worlds?

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DougBTX
> I could definitely see using this format for detection

Why have any gaps between the keys at all?

On a physical keyboard, you want gaps for at least a couple of reasons: so
that your fingers can feel the edges, and so that you don't accidently click
on two keys at once. Triangular keys might make some sense on a physical
keyboard then, since presumably you would be able to press inside the combined
area of the key's triangle and the two adjacent triangular gaps, so less
chance of pressing two keys at once.

On a soft keyboard, you can't feel the edges of the keys, so the first point
doesn't apply anymore. The second worry, pressing two keys at once, also
doesn't apply, since the software calculates the centre point of the finger
press, and activates the key which that point falls over, rather than all the
keys under your finger.

With a soft key pad then, the only real way to make keys easier to press is to
make them bigger. The iPhone for example, will increase the effective size of
the keys that you are likely to press next, predicted based on language
settings.

So, it probably hasn't been implemented for a soft key pad because it would
make it harder to press the keys. You would press roughly in the right place,
and get no response.

As for physical key pads, I notice that the Blackberry has keys with raised
diagonals. That probably gets you most of the advantages of triangular keys
(easier to feel them apart) without the need to actually make them triangular.

[http://3466.voxcdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/09/8820-keybo...](http://3466.voxcdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/09/8820-keyboard.jpg?host=vox)

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derefr
I'm imagining that the real HCI difference here is that _which_ key your
finger is determined to be centered on changes. Whereas before, touching the
"gap" between a key _above_ and _below_ your finger would have an
unpredictable 50/50 chance of activating either key, now the "gradient of
precedence" of the keys fade out as they near the triangle point, so, assuming
the triangles were pointed downward, you would _always_ activate the key
below. Making things predictable makes users happy. You could do this without
the triangular display, of course; it's simply an interesting affordance to
hint to users that they can use the keys this way.

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DougBTX
Wouldn't that be the same as shifting the active area of the keys a few pixels
upwards?

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philwelch
Dead space would just be assigned to the nearest possible key anyway so this
isn't much gain.

Now, if you had _tessellated_ triangles, that might work. Right now, the
keyboard works by row and column. I suspect it's more common for the iPhone to
trigger "f" as "d" or "g" rather than "r" or "v": in other words, detecting
side to side is harder than up and down. That suggests to me that if you
tessellated triangular keys together, how far up and down you are would help
determine whether you were going for an upward-pointing key or a downward-
pointing key. This isn't very clearly stated but I hope it makes some sense.

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rw140
Tessellated hexagons might be interesting - they have the advantage of being
closer to a circular target.

Apparently I'm not the first one to think of that - a quick check threw up
<http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5805157.html>

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TJensen
It's easy to make the keys look far apart in a landscape mode. Go back to
portrait and talk to me then.

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seldo
Something about this says "klingon" to me, but I can't find a good screenshot
of the UI I'm thinking of.

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kqr2
You can actually buy a ps/2 compatible Klingon keyboard although the keys are
not triangular:

[http://www.cherrykeyboardsrus.co.uk/Klingon+Language-
Details...](http://www.cherrykeyboardsrus.co.uk/Klingon+Language-Details.htm)

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baddox
This sort of makes sense to me for small tactile keyboards, but with a touch
screen, why does it even matter? You could just as easily have no gap between
keys, but calculate a "confidence" level of what key was pressed based on how
close to the center of the key the press occurred. It seems to me that this
layout would just turned incorrect key presses into ignored key presses if you
hit in the dead space around the triangles. I guess you can consider that
better since you don't have to backspace, but a decent smart-correction
implementation is better still.

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joeyo
Not only that but you should be able to add predictive text logic to the
decision process: pick the next letter both based on the location of the key
press and the next letter that we think you would type anyway. If you last
typed a Q you probably next want a U not a J.

Edit: DougBXT claims below that the iPhone already does this.

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baddox
I believe the iPhone does do this. Because of this, what is the point of
having the triangular keys? I suppose changing the onscreen appearance of the
keys may cause people to touch more toward the center of the key, but that
would only yield better results at the expense of typing speed.

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shalmanese
I googled for his name and, as far as I can tell, he doesn't have a web
presence, he's not an academic or has published an academic paper and he
doesn't have any quantitative studies up backing up what he's done.

Not saying it won't work, just saying that he seems like an outsider and so
I'm going to be sceptical unless he demonstrates something a bit more
substantial than a puffed up media piece.

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srn
I'm skeptical of claims without any research to back it up. But some thoughts
(DISCLAIMER this is BS)

An effect of having triangular keys instead of square keys on a soft keyboard
is that each key has a clearly delineated boundary rather than sharing
boundaries. I wonder if that can have an effect on how well people can
associate a given shape with a letter when looking at it.

I also might guess with the extra space it takes longer to visually scan
across the keyboard if you are looking for a key. So if there was a benefit to
accuracy maybe it would be from slowing down the user enough for them to
really process what they are looking at.

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nx
_Baker told Register Hardware today that each triangular key has significantly
more dead space around it than you’d find on a standard Qwerty layout.
Consequently, users are more likely to press the correct key each time they
tap._

Or less likely to press any key at all?

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joepestro
This could be made into an iPhone app for email/sms.

It wouldn't replace the native keyboard on the iPhone, but would allow users
to compose their message using this triangular keyboard and forward the text
to the appropriate application.

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stcredzero
I'd like to see quantitative studies showing how much of an improvement this
is! That should be very doable with the App Dev Kit.

