The sound of one hand touch-typing

I’ve often wondered, if it would be possible to keep one hand on the mouse and just use a single hand for typing. This would especially speed up pointing-intensive tasks such as editing graphics. Matias actually sells a keyboard called the “Half Keyboard” that allows one to do so. As the name implies, it is half a keyboard with the mapping of the left hand that allows you to switch to the right hand mapping via Shift. You still type with your left hand, but can use the muscle memory of your right hand. This post has details on how well this works:

Unlike many purported "solutions" to typing problems, Half-QWERTY has actually been tested – at the University of Toronto Input Research Group (with which Matias is affiliated). After about ten hours of practice, most test subjects were typing with one hand at over 50% of their two-handed typing speeds; one subject hit 88% of her two-handed rate. Errors, however, were about twice as frequent as in two-handed typing.

 The post also mentions a few caveats, notably the problem that if you do not already touch type, usage might be a bit difficult to pick up. For touch-typists it would obviously make a great keyboard for mobile devices. For more on the idea of “one hand clapping”, you can look up Koan at Wikipedia.

Multi-touch versus keyboard

For recent travels I bought an Apple bluetooth keyboard (following the lead of my brother). It is a joy to have a real keyboard for typing longer texts (such as this one). Arrow keys are great for moving the cursor and for selecting text.



Apple has done an awesome job of supporting Bluetooth keyboards on the iPad. This surprises, because I don’t think there are many people who use one. Examples: All keys work, even strange ones like curly quotes. The same holds for the function keys (next track, pause music, screen brightness etc.). Selecting text with shift and arrow keys and the shortcuts for cut, copy, paste work, too. Furthermore, when the iPad is paired with a keyboard, the soft keyboard does not pop up, any more, saving screen space. The only current drawback is that I would love to have an English spell check while using the German keyboard layout (also know as “kezboard lazout” in the exotic circles that have this need).



Yet, the user experience is also a bit strange. It is liberating to have the iPad screen propped up in front of oneself and to be able to move around with the keyboard. But once I do that, I switch to “remote control mode”. Then a trackpad attached to the keyboard makes more sense than having to reach for the screen and touch. This might point to a new kind of hybrid notebook: The screen not being clamshell makes the iPad quicker to operate in most situations. For typing, an external keyboard is perfectly usable (I wish it didn’t need batteries, but at least they last long). But it probably needs to be foldable and have a trackpad. Then future user interfaces would be designed to be operated both by keyboard and by touch. Android’s use of cursor keys is exemplary in this regard.



Update:

• 2011-01-20: The three contexts of device interaction

Usability: phone numbers and special characters

Why do so many web sites insist that, when entering a phone number, you not type any non-digits such as spaces, hyphens, parentheses or slashes? The structure that these characters bring to phone numbers help humans considerably and computers can easily filter them out. So what is the harm of allowing them? I would even store phone numbers in a database as they were entered.

Touch user interfaces benefit the blind

The blind profit from accessibility features that are possible because of multi-touch. This seems counter-intuitive, because multi-touch conjures up the image of user interfaces that are sometimes almost too visually rich. Apparently, Apple’s implementation is very capable. You can, for example, point your finger at the screen and the computer speaks out what is there. It’s obvious that the same feature would not make sense with a mouse. Gestures are also great for blind people. Daring Fireball points to two moving stories of a blind guy who is very happy with what multi-touch allows him to do.

What’s up with all the toolbars on the web?

Why are people always such mindless copycats? Facebook has a toolbar, so their web page needs one, too? I find such toolbars a major nuisance, they are distracting, take up screen real estate and every one of them has a different way of being hidden.

Can gaming make a better world?

Jane McGonigal certainly seems to think so. She argues that gaming is becoming increasingly wide-spread and that gamers exhibit the following positive traits while gaming:

• Urgent optimism: in a game, every problem can be solved. Conversely, solving problems in reality can be impossible and frustrating.


• Social fabric: gamers must form a team to solve a problem. One is forced to socialize, which is also the reason for multi-player games being so appealing.


• Blissful productivity: Gamers put in a lot of time and work quite hard to achieve their goals. Compare this to universities where students frequently complain about a lack of motivation.


• Epic meaning: McGonigal mentions the “World of Warcraft wiki” being the second largest wiki after Wikipedia. I’m not sure what her point is here. It seems related to the previous point, because without the meaning that games provide, gamers would not be motivated.

She then presents three games that helped to shape participants’ behavior in the real world:

• World without oil: simulates an oil crisis. Participants apply oil-saving habits that they have acquired in the game to the real world.


• Superstruct: Ups the stakes by simulating a reality where a computer predicts that humanity only has 23 years to go.


• Evoke: A game designed to elicit social innovations from participants.

McGonigal concludes that games can be used to solve real-world problems. This position is based on a few assumptions, some of which I partially disagree with:

• There is not enough problem-solving in the world. Not true. The problem is that there is too much optimization, but it all happens locally and/or at the wrong place (investment bankers maximizing their profits, politicians looking for votes, etc.). Many people try to “save the world”, but it often involves fighting someone else and increasing conflict (of which there is already too much). So my guess is that most of the (industrialized) world would profit from people taking it easier and letting the big picture seep in.


• Analysis is the best tool to solve the world’s problems. Many hard problems are based on emotions: wars, discrimination, racism, obesity, etc. Rational thought is often the wrong tool to solve these problems. Otherwise, rational people would not be obese or alcoholics. On the other hand, the social component of games can be used to influence people on a more emotional level. Compare this to how having more black role models on TV and in the movies must help with reducing racism. Some of the older Hollywood movies were atrocious in this regard... Visualizing something is a powerful first step towards making it a reality.


• Everyone’s contributions are similar. Expert contributions have a different quality from grass root ideas how everyone can contribute. The “global extinction awareness system” game seems to factor in expert knowledge, but fully integrating such knowledge into game play seems quite challenging to me.

I think that for real-world problem solving, the current games are a start, but they have to become more sophisticated. Instead, I would interpret McGonigal’s arguments differently: She makes a compelling case for using games for education. Game technology could help to transfer experience (via a simulation) and not just dry knowledge. Everything would have a lot more meaning. You could, for example, walk through ancient Rome instead of only reading about it. Peer teaching is desirable, not common in classrooms, and can be the result of the above mentioned social component of games. Another example are foreign languages. To me, learning a foreign language only made sense after I went to a country where it was spoken and experienced it in action. Accordingly, game technology can provide immersive language learning.

Google Wave is dead

It was bound to happen: Google Wave is dead. Google Wave has always been a problematic product: What does it really do?

(*) What is wrong with email, instant messaging, forums, and collaborative editors? Why do they need to be merged into a single product? It was a typical Google product: Technologically very impressive, only for technical people (I have yet to meet a non-technical person that has used it), abandoned after a short while.

By the way: If anyone has an answer to (*), I would love to hear about it.



Update 2010-12-25: Google Wave has now become an Apache project.

I’ve thought about it some more and there is something intriguing about continually updating information and tracking the changes that are made. But a wiki that allows one to follow changes should be enough for that. Instead, Wave conflated this kind of documentation with instant-messaging-style brainstorming. I suspect that keeping brainstorming fully documented does not make sense and goes against the human tendency to maintain order by throwing stuff away and/or transforming it into something new.

Microsoft Street Slide: Like Google Street View, only better

Microsoft research does great work (Photosynth, Courier, Surface, ...), it’s a shame that it so rarely contributes to actual products. “Microsoft Street Slide” (MSS) fixes a problem that Google Street View has: While you can move around in your virtual surroundings, it is difficult to get a sense of context (“what is around me?”, “where am I?”). MSS helps by allowing one to zoom out and get a look at a whole street.

Inconsistent information in your database

The blog post “Rethinking Form Validation” describes an interesting idea (apparently inspired by one of Alan Cooper’s books): While developers are fond of only storing information that is fully validated, it may help end users if they can store inconsistent data. Related examples include forms that force you to only enter digits for phone numbers (no spaces, dashes, parentheses, etc.) or some obvious characters being forbidden from passwords. Validation should be unobtrusive, because there are always going to be unforeseen cases where rigid control works against the user. Eclipse’s handling of Java syntax errors is exemplary: You are warned about them, but you are not prevented from continuing your work.

Why isn’t “paste without formatting” the default?

I can’t even remember when the last time was that I wanted to keep the formatting when pasting something. Thus, “paste without formatting” should be the default, keeping the formatting should be an option. Microsoft Office 2010 does it this way, why doesn’t everyone else, too?

Gestural computing: use your hands without touching

Gestural computing could be the answer to adopting multi-touch for desktop computers, where it hasn’t caught on as much as on cell phones. Gestural computing records hand movements in front of your computer. Thus, you don’t have to touch (and smudge) your screen and 3D gestures become possible. Not having to touch means that you don’t have to get as close, which is a good fit for current desktop setups where the monitor stands apart from the keyboard (=your hands). When typing a lot, you can just lift your hand briefly, perform a gesture, and then continue typing. In full gesture mode, you’ll probably look a bit like Tom Cruise in Minority Report (minus the gloves).
As mentioned in the article, touchless operation is a big plus in public spaces where hygiene really matters (just think about all the people touching an ATM screen).

What does a multi-touch desktop GUI look like?

R. Clayton Miller’s 10/GUI is an interesting look at what multi-touch desktop GUIs might look like. Obstacles are that it's difficult to position large desktop monitors so that one can comfortably touch-use them for extended periods of time; and that using hands to manipulate on-screen objects tends to obstruct the view to them. 10/GUI has two main ideas: First, to use a giant multi-touch track-pad. Second to rethink the window manager. The first idea makes perfect sense. The second idea is neat, but can probably still improved upon. The idea is still that an application should fill out most of the screen. Splitting a screen in half, vertically should work, but more than two partitions don't seem possible. My personal bet would be on 2.5-dimensional zooming user interfaces that restrict navigational movements (to improve usability). Fingers should work well to quickly organize files, documents, windows, etc. Bumptop solves this one aspect neatly. Windows 1, Eclipse, and Windows 7 have some intriguing ideas about how to split screen space between windows.
Interestingly, Apple's notebooks and their multi-touch trackpads are well positioned to implement something similar to 10/GUI. Already, multi-touch gestures for scrolling and zooming make some GUI widgets inefficient and unnecessary.

Emacs org-mode: notes, planning, authoring – in plain text

Emacs contains all kinds of craziness, but this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time: org-mode is an Emacs mode that does outlining, planning and authoring, all in plain text. A few of the highlights:

• Everything is text. This does have disadvantages, but the advantages are obvious: easily exchanged by email, put into version control, a format many applications understand, etc.


• Outlining


• Hyperlinks to emails, web pages, files, etc. inside content
  
  


• Meta-data such as tags and dates attached to content
  
  


• Tables: continuously aligns all the cells of a column and can move columns around.
  
  


• Spreadsheets: you can perform calculations in tables
  
  


• Publishing: content can be published as HTML and LaTeX
  
  

Find more information here:

• The org-mode web site


• Google tech talk on org-mode
  
  

A projected user interface for portable devices

Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry: Unveiling the “Sixth Sense,” game-changing wearable tech

A nice demo of a device that uses a projector and image recognition to project its user interface onto external objects. This is an interesting contribution to exploring the extremes of immersive user interface on one hand and external user interfaces on the other hand.

Update: More user interface ideas:

David Merrill: Siftables, the toy blocks that think

New video editing ideas

A video about “Interactive Video Object Manipulation” demonstrates research done by Adobe. One can for example, draw a rectangle on a moving object, type text into it and the text stays attached as the object moves:Or, with several people in a video, one can create a picture where shots from different times appear side by side, thus increasing the probability that all of them look good. [Source and picture: Engadget]

If you want to see more technology in a similar vein, look at these videos:

• Image Resizing by Seam Carving: Resizes images without them looking distorted. By marking areas, one can remove these areas when compressing the image.
  
  


• Microsoft Photosynth: Places images in a 3-dimensional space allowing one to do all kinds of cool zooming etc.