The keyboard is a problem. From long term stress issues in the arms and wrists of people who use it, to accessibility for those with limited fine motor skills, to restricting design of technologies that need to interface with it, the modern keyboard is incredibly flawed. Even things as simple as key placement were designed to slow down the user. The keyboard is big, it is static, and it is a relic of past technologies that is affecting our ability to progress. We need something that will revolutionize how we think about interacting with computers.

The Keyboard 2.0 is my solution.

The vast majority of objects that our hands are required to interact with over the course of the day are shaped to be grasped. From door handles to writing implements to bags and silverware, even to our phones, very little demands that we twist our wrists, and when they do, they don’t demand that motion for an extended period of time. Our arms naturally rest such that our palms face one another, and if we are to continue to demand that so much of our society is based around the use of keyboards, it seems irresponsible to force people to stress their bodies in ways that lead to injury.

Fundamentally, the design of the Keyboard 2.0 is based on modern efforts to make the keyboard more accessible. One of the more notable attempts was created by a game developer named VALVe. In part of launching their controller based interface, they created a virtual keyboard system that allows easy typing, without requiring immediate access to a keyboard.

The way VALVe’s virtual keyboard works is by mapping four letters to eight directions on the left analogue stick. Each one of those letters is in turn mapped to one of the four discreet buttons on the right side of the controller. The way one types, then, is by holding the left stick with your left thumb and tapping a button with your right thumb. The letter M, for example, is inputted by holding the left stick southeast and pushing the blue button.

While this design is an important first step in both making typing less physically stressful and faster. The total amount of movement is significantly decreased, and the default position your hands are in is very natural as compared to a modern keyboard. On the speed front, the letters are organized in an intuitive way, and movement from one letter to another is far less restricted. Each letter requires movement of at most about an inch for one thumb. The problems with this design, however, lie in both how limited it is and in the use of an analogue stick.

While eight directions and four buttons give you access to enough discreet inputs for a standard english alphabet, it doesn’t afford the kind of variety that many applications of a keyboard require. Special characters, capitalization, and function keys don’t have any space on the virtual keyboard, and while they do assign four modifier buttons to be controller by your first finger, they are reserved for capitalization and quick access to a space key. The second issue is that of the analogue stick. Lacking any physical feedback, analogue sticks are imprecise. The difference between angling it north and northwest is physically uncertain, and creates a potential problem when typing quickly. As a result, my design starts with this base, and builds off in a way that attempts to avoid these problems.

The Keyboard 2.0 has the same four face buttons as the above Xbox 360 controller, but it also has those buttons copied on to the left half, replacing the analogue stick. Most importantly, it has sixteen buttons laid out on the back side of the device. Those sixteen buttons are grouped up in to pairs and arranged so each finger not being used on the front of the device has access to two buttons. This new configuration uses the back-facing buttons for key inputs and the forward facing buttons as modifiers. While holding down the east button on the left half of the front of the controller, each of the back facing buttons would match up with a different input than if you were holding down the north button on the right side. This design allows for hundreds of different quickly accessible inputs, most of which would be customizable. This solves the two problems I highlighted earlier by only relying on discreet, tactile buttons and opening up the input possibility space exponentially.

The Keyboard 2.0 also fits neatly into multiple definitions of new media objects. Two of Lev Manovich’s proposed qualities of new media are highlighted, despite this being a technological design rather than a virtual design. Numerical representation and variability are both present. In terms of numerical representation, the Keyboard 2.0 is literally just a binary input device. Every possible state of the device can be represented by a simple series of zeroes and ones, each number standing for one of the 24 buttons. As for variability, the modifiers allowing for customizable keyboards makes the Keyboard 2.0 more versatile than its predecessor. It is no longer locked in to the relatively small number of distinct commonly used states of the keyboard. These new media qualities lend themselves neatly to the idea that Keyboard 2.0 is a step forward.

Additionally, Katherine Hayles highlights some of the ways in which technologies evolve. Hayles discusses how technologies have been adding dimensions to themselves; As we move to an age with 3D printing and highly complex systems governing much of our lives, the Keyboard 2.0 adds extra dimensions to our ability to interface with those systems. The countless different inputs that it affords the user will allow even more complex interactions between the systems and the user.

The Keyboard 2.0 would dramatically change how people interact with computers on a very basic level.  Fluency with it would have to be taught as early as middle school, if not even earlier, but given the theoretical benefits this could have on society at large, I believe it is the right step forward.

Works Cited

Manovich, Lev. “Principles of New Media.” The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002. 27-45. Print.

Hayles, Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2012. Print.

Images

“Controllers & Remotes.” Xbox 360 Controllers and Remotes. Microsoft, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. <http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/accessories/controllers/home>.

Kain, Erik. “Steam’s Big Picture Mode Looks Awesome – But It Won’t Replace Consoles [Updated].” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 9 Oct. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/09/10/steams-big-picture-mode-looks-awesome-but-it-wont-replace-consoles/>.