Hasta La Gadget!

Nov 02

Hate Touchscreen Typing? Try 8pen’s Spiral Gestures

Posted in: apps, Phones, Smartphones, Today's Chili

Typing on small virtual keyboards can be hard. 8pen, like Swype, is an alternate text entry program that uses continuous gestures, but instead of navigating a QWERTY keyboard, you use a click-wheel-like spiral motion to select text. It’s out today for Android, with versions for iOS, Windows, remotes and even game controllers in the works.

The best analogy I can offer for 8pen’s interface, again, is the old iPod click wheel. The screen is divided into four quadrants with an X. You begin at the center. Moving into each quadrant selects one of eight characters. A clockwise or counterclockwise movement cuts that character list in half. Then, one, two, three, or four “clicks” through each sector selects the first, second, third, or fourth character. In practice, each gesture amounts to a partial circle.

There are also definable custom gestures for stock phrases or names. I think this is actually the most interesting part of the application.

8pen claims to solve two problems: first, the fact that QWERTY screens optimized for two hands can’t be used that way; and second, that our current software keyboards make it too difficult to type blind. (Take a moment and think about how often you look at a virtual keyboard and how often you look at a physical keyboard.)

How effective could 8pen be? Well, that depends in part on how easy it is to learn.

We know a little bit about how users learn how to use new interfaces. Users have an easier time translating skills from familiar technologies. The QWERTY keyboard, however cramped, is a familiar technology, which is why we use it even in cases where it’s suboptimal. 8pen claims its gestures are closer to handwriting. Add the click-wheel interface, and there is a technology base, however weak, that users can draw on.

Users also have a harder time learning new technologies when they know old, incompatible ones really well. If you’re comfortable using a QWERTY keyboard, and particularly a miniaturized hardware or software keyboard, the costs of switching to a new interface are too high.

It’s like switching to Windows 7 when you know XP inside and out: even if it’s objectively a superior system, you can get more done using the tool you know best. There has to be a crisis to force a move — sort of like how the hurdles and reputation of Windows Vista led a lot of users to take a long hard look at Mac OS X.

One problem I see with 8pen is the way it’s framed. First, smartphone typing may not use all of both hands, but it does use more than one finger, whether it’s two thumbs, a thumb and an index finger, or some combination of these. I find myself using at least my thumb, index and middle fingers on both hands most of the time. (I am a fast typist with very large hands.)

Taking these extra resources off-screen doesn’t seem likely to speed things up. It forces us to type with one finger, when one-finger typing is actually the problem.

Second, it’s hard to type blind on a smartphone because the text entry surface and the screen are on the same plane. On a laptop, desktop or clamshell, the screen and text surface are separated, with the screen on the vertical plane and text entry on the horizontal.

This is actually an advantage for the smartphone in some ways, because it brings the eye and hand together like in manuscript writing. It’s a problem because there isn’t a natural orientation for both reading and writing, so we usually wind up hunched over a diagonal screen.

This is my skeptical take. More optimistically, I think it’s promising that companies are experimenting with text entry on touchscreens. There are huge numbers of people venturing into touchscreen text entry who don’t have lots of experience with smartphone typing, or even as much hardware keyboard typing than those of us who bang away on computers all day.

Meanwhile, frequent text entry is venturing into more and more devices — television sets, electronic readers, remote controls. If someone can create a system that’s easy to learn, relatively intuitive and reliable, there is a huge opportunity for the company that gets it right.

The 8pen [the8pen.com]