Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype • Hacker News Board

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#21

Post by elros » Fri, Apr 10, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

    > Back in the Day...
    > “Turn your pagers to 1993.” -Christopher Wallace

Love the Biggie references :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Notorious_B.I.G.

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#22

Post by foob » Fri, Apr 10, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

ffk wrote: post #19

Sangaline: Can you add a visualization of the qwerty keyboard so that we can compare it with your proposed best and worst layouts? :)

Sure, here you go: http://sangaline.com/blog/optimizing_for_swype/img/qwerty.ke...

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#23

Post by foob » Fri, Apr 10, 2015, 10:32 PM UTC

elros wrote: post #21

> Back in the Day... > “Turn your pagers to 1993.” -Christopher Wallace Love the Biggie references :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Notorious_B.I.G .

I honestly wrote that entire section just so that I could work that quote in :-)

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#24

Post by foob » Fri, Apr 10, 2015, 11:14 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #16

First, loved the technical writing here. Second, if we're willing to make people learn a different keycap arrangement, why aren't we willing to make them learn a different physical layout? I suspect a completely different physical layout would likely reduce the error rate from confusion between keycap arrangements (e.g., you'll still have to use QWERTY). Anyone remember "Fitaly"? It was a big timesaver on my Compaq i…

I'm perfectly willing to make people learn all sorts of new things :-). We focused on optimizing over the permutations of the key labels in this analysis but we designed dodona [1] to be much more flexible. To demonstrate this, I just threw together a quick little notebook [2] evaluating the average distance traveled for FITALY. As you'd expect, it's much shorter than what we find using a random configuration. We'd love it if people used dodona to explore things more creative than permuting keys.

[1] https://github.com/sangaline/dodona/

[2] http://sangaline.com/blog/optimizing_for_swype/FITALY.html

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#25

Post by akkartik » Fri, Apr 10, 2015, 11:56 PM UTC

Feature request for any swype hackers reading this: please allow me to type punctuation using graffiti. Faster to draw a semi-colon with my finger than to tap the modifier key, peck the semi-colon and then modifier again.

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#26

Post by imathew » Sat, Apr 11, 2015, 1:37 AM UTC

bluehawk wrote: post #8

blister wrote: post #7

This was a fascinating article. The first thing that jumped out at me when I reached the end was "there's no way this would ever work." I am a Swype user and love the product, but I'm reasonably fast at typing on it because I know the QWERTY layout like the back of my hand. Switching to a new layout would bring me back to a crawl. I'd probably be better off typing on a 9-digit pre-smartphone keypad at that point. Coo…

I actually don't think it would be that bad. Learning T9 wasn't so hard. And I believe that the muscle memory for typing and swyping is totally different, at least based on my anecdotal evidence: I've used Dvorak on all my computers for about 10 years, but my phones are still QWERTY. I've tried switching my phone to Dvorak, but found that the typos were much worse (because dvorak clusters all the most used letters on…

I'm the same - I have been using Dvorak for twelve years, but that's all about muscle memory with both hands, I struggle to type with it without two hands in place. When I jump onto a colleague's computer I can use QWERTY OK because my brain reverts to the old four-finger typing I used to do. I'm much faster at Swyping on a QWERTY keyboard, though, because it's a different paradigm entirely - it's more about movement than keypress.

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#27

Post by alphapapa » Sat, Apr 11, 2015, 2:43 AM UTC

akkartik wrote: post #25

Feature request for any swype hackers reading this: please allow me to type punctuation using graffiti. Faster to draw a semi-colon with my finger than to tap the modifier key, peck the semi-colon and then modifier again.

You can swipe from several punctuation keys to the spacebar...

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#28

Post by Thiz » Sat, Apr 11, 2015, 3:01 AM UTC

How about putting all the vowels in a middle row and the consonants in natural order?

    BCDFG
    HJKLM
    AEIOU
    NPQRS
    TVWXYZ

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#29

Post by Thiz » Sat, Apr 11, 2015, 3:04 AM UTC

Thiz wrote: post #28

How about putting all the vowels in a middle row and the consonants in natural order? BCDFG HJKLM AEIOU NPQRS TVWXYZ

Or this three liner?

     B C D F G H J K L M
     ^ #  A E I O U  . ,
    N P Q R S T V W X Y Z

Re: Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype

#30

Post by mistercow » Sat, Apr 11, 2015, 6:25 AM UTC

blister wrote: post #7

This was a fascinating article. The first thing that jumped out at me when I reached the end was "there's no way this would ever work." I am a Swype user and love the product, but I'm reasonably fast at typing on it because I know the QWERTY layout like the back of my hand. Switching to a new layout would bring me back to a crawl. I'd probably be better off typing on a 9-digit pre-smartphone keypad at that point. Coo…

The thing is, while I used to know QWERTY fluently, since I switched to Colemak a few years back, I have to hunt and peck a bit on QWERTY keyboards. But it's not a problem when using Swype.

I think this is because you're looking at the keyboard anyway. My guess is that whatever layout you use, it won't be hard to memorize when it's right in front of your face as you use it.