スマホ入力の常識を覆す？新発想のキーボード『Keybee』が話題に

Keybeeは、スマートフォンでのタイピングをより効率化するために設計された、全く新しいコンセプトのキーボードです。モバイルデバイス向けに最適化された独自のレイアウトが特徴で、従来のQWERTY配列に代わる次世代の入力体験を提供します。

I think the key to smartphone keyboards is something like Nintype, two-finger swiping. It's incredibly fast and doesn't require you to learn a completely new keyboard layout to succeed.

It's also a lot more comfortable for one-hand typing since you can do multiple swipes per word.

Funny that looking at their "number of touches" and "distance covered" checker, I've tried a few words and thinking in my head how it'd be in Nintype and it would score far better than Keybee.

Unfortunately I haven't seen anyone since Nintype (and the older Keymonk) to give it an attempt.

Compare 1996's "FITALY":

"For the FITALY layout, we have obtained an average travel of 1.8, to be compared to an average travel of 3.2 for the QWERTY layout. (For prose, involving few numbers and symbols, the results are even better.)"

https://www.textware.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm (https://www.textware.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm)

https://the-gadgeteer.com/1998/08/22/fitaly_review/ (https://the-gadgeteer.com/1998/08/22/fitaly_review/)

And closer to OP, "HexInput":

"Please use this idea! If you are a software developer, I urge you to consider adding this functionality to your product. My hope is that ten years from now, we won't have to laboriously tap out messages letter by letter, but instead will be able to zip them out quickly and efficiently with something like HexInput." -Sept2006

https://www.strout.net/info/ideas/hexinput.html (https://www.strout.net/info/ideas/hexinput.html)

1996, 2006, 2026... Your turn?

Nice, but physical keyboards are making a comeback.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114412 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114412)

Percentage bars do not seem to work (FF Mobile), or your conclusion must be that the distance is exactly equal

It's interesting but I wish I could still Swype on it

Very cool. The biggest questions someone skimming would likely be why the letters are in this order, and how this is consumed (eg ios app?). You may answer those details but they were not front and center to me.

We did a lot of experimentation with keyboards in Android - finding better ways to type and click is pure HCI dream work

The key challenge is:

• At first, people don't care about speed - they just want to type well and accurately - for most people, that means standardised layout across all their devices, and they won't consider phones that push them into other models.

• Only after they've mastered that standard layout do they start to care about speed, but by then they've gotten good enough at the basic system that swapping to anything else is too much of a regression

So I really do love the existence of third party keyboards that cater to the set of people that are willing to deal with that setback

I wonder what got them kicked from iOS. Alt keyboards in the app store definitely do exist...

No swyping and no autocorrect make it DOA

Looking at the English keyboard and the English digraphs, it doesn't seem like the coverage is that well optimized. We are currently capturing 8.65% of the digraph weight, but just getting the top-5 would account for 5% by itself.

I also feel like distance travelled is the wrong (or an incomplete) metric. Change in direction seems like a good proxy for mental or physical effort. To take it to an extreme, I'd be very satisfied with a keyboard that had me move my thumb in a circle as on the original iPod, provided it just read my mind and inputted the right text. That's extreme distance but little effort.

https://pi.math.cornell.edu/%7Emec/2003-2004/cryptography/su... (https://pi.math.cornell.edu/%7Emec/2003-2004/cryptography/subs/digraphs.jpg)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewise)

    +---------+---------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+
    | Digraph | Frequency (%) | Adjacent? | Pair on Keyboard                    |
    +---------+---------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+
    | TH      | 1.52          | Yes       | T is right of H                     |
    | HE      | 1.28          | No        | Separated by O and [Space]          |
    | IN      | 0.94          | Yes       | I is top-left of N                  |
    | ER      | 0.94          | Yes       | E is below R                        |
    | AN      | 0.82          | No        | A is bottom-center; N is top-right  |
    | RE      | 0.68          | Yes       | R is above E                        |
    | ND      | 0.63          | No        | N is top-right; D is bottom-right   |
    | AT      | 0.59          | No        | Separated by [Space] and S          |
    | ON      | 0.57          | No        | Separated by H and T                |
    | NT      | 0.56          | Yes       | N is top-right of T                 |
    | HA      | 0.56          | No        | Separated by [Space]                |
    | ES      | 0.56          | No        | Separated by [Space]                |
    | ST      | 0.55          | Yes       | S is below T                        |
    | EN      | 0.55          | No        | N/E are on opposite sides           |
    | ED      | 0.53          | No        | E is center-left; D is bottom-right |
    | TO      | 0.52          | No        | Separated by H                      |
    | IT      | 0.50          | Yes       | I is above T                        |
    | OU      | 0.50          | Yes       | O is below U                        |
    | EA      | 0.47          | Yes       | E is top-left of A                  |
    | HI      | 0.46          | Yes       | H is below-left of I                |
    | IS      | 0.46          | No        | Separated by T                      |
    | OR      | 0.43          | Yes       | O is below R                        |
    | TI      | 0.34          | Yes       | T is below I                        |
    | AS      | 0.33          | Yes       | A is below-left of S                |
    | TE      | 0.27          | No        | Separated by H and [Space]          |
    | ET      | 0.19          | No        | Separated by H and [Space]          |
    | NG      | 0.18          | Yes       | N is above G                        |
    | OF      | 0.16          | Yes       | O is below F                        |
    | AL      | 0.09          | Yes       | A is right of L                     |
    | DE      | 0.09          | No        | E/D are distant                     |
    +---------+---------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+