Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones

keybeekeyboard.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones

#41

Post by BrenBarn »

avidiax wrote: post #24

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…

I agree that distance is not a great metric. The maximum travel distance on a smartphone screen is already tiny. I'd say the best metric is accuracy or lack of amibiguity, something like average confidence level that any given swipe means a particular word and not another. (This is assuming swipe-based word entry, which I much prefer to anything tap-based.)

Re: Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones

#42

Post by anishgupta »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #34

> Keybee Keyboard increases more than double the keysize thanks to its hexagonal structure. No waste of pixels. It may be efficient, but it's using more screen space; I'm not sure that's a win.

same thought, we've been using smartphones since 2 decades now, and not just we dont have a problem with qwerty, but anything new will be requiring more cycles to get accustomed to

Re: Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones

#44

Post by helloplanets »

andai wrote: post #36
WillAdams wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a _lot_ of programs in this space, one of the more interesting was AlphaTap! by Network Improv: http://networkimprov.net/alphatap/light.html c.f., the research project: https://dasher.zone/docs/getting-started/how-to/ For my part, I just write text out using a Wacom stylus on my Note 10+

>Type by zooming infinitely into a prediction model Holy crap that's a trippy GIF

At the very least it captures well how it feels to talk when sufficiently high...

Re: Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones

#45

Post by menturi »

dangus wrote: post #25

This is gonna be like Dvorak where eventually we all figure out that it’s not significantly faster and you had to re-learn how to type just to figure that out. I submit the idea that for most smartphone users, distance traveled and layout are not the limiting factor for typing speed.

I find another factor that is not always discussed is comfort and how pleasant it is to use a layout. I know Dvorak is not much faster in the end but it is such a joy to use in comparison to Qwerty. I do wonder if it would be fun or just nice to use this hex-grid layout on a phone.

Re: Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones

#49

Post by alterom »

anishgupta wrote: post #42
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #34

> Keybee Keyboard increases more than double the keysize thanks to its hexagonal structure. No waste of pixels. It may be efficient, but it's using more screen space; I'm not sure that's a win.

same thought, we've been using smartphones since 2 decades now, and not just we dont have a problem with qwerty, but anything new will be requiring more cycles to get accustomed to

I can touch-type with flow typing in GBoard at this point.

That's to say, I'm writing this comment on my Android phone without looking at the keyboard.

QWERTY is in my muscle memory in such a way that words have become writable as single stroke characters.

I really, really doubt this Keybee thing can be an improvement over that in any way.

Re: Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones

#50

Post by skeledrew »

alterom wrote: post #49
anishgupta wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same thought, we've been using smartphones since 2 decades now, and not just we dont have a problem with qwerty, but anything new will be requiring more cycles to get accustomed to

I can touch-type with flow typing in GBoard at this point. That's to say, I'm writing this comment on my Android phone without looking at the keyboard. QWERTY is in my muscle memory in such a way that words have become writable as single stroke characters. I really, really doubt this Keybee thing can be an improvement over that in any way.

People riding horse buggies probably thought the same when powered vehicles first came about, and look at the world now. You won't know unless you give it a honest try.
Post reply on HN