from Hacker News

The Minuum keyboard project: mobile keyboards reimagined

by neonkiwi on 3/18/13, 2:36 PM with 86 comments

• by raganwald on 3/18/13, 3:33 PM

  My (irrational) fear is that if this becomes a modest success, there will be an aqui-hiring with much talk of it appearing in some upcoming edition of Blackberry or Windows or whatever, and then nothing will be heard from them again.

  I think I need a little more sunshine, I must be low on Vitamin D.

• by SEMW on 3/18/13, 11:03 PM

  Vaguely reminds me of Dave Mackay's (sadly now neglected) Dasher research project[1], in that both can be used to enter text with input devices that only have a single axis.

  Dasher's seems like it fits better with continuous/'analogue' input methods, though (it uses inherently continuous input, Minuum's just using the analogue entry systems to simulate a single-row keyboard).

  [1] home: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/

  gif showing the concept: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/images/largedasher...

  play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dasher.android

• by nsxwolf on 3/18/13, 7:53 PM

  Video: Loud music, lots of bass, dude is a quiet talker. I couldn't make out everything he was saying.

  Also: Touch typing on the full size iPad is extremely pleasant, and not bad on the mini. Screen real estate is quickly reclaimed when you quit typing. It's nice to have the same text input interface between your laptop and tablet.

• by mike_esspe on 3/18/13, 5:14 PM

  I personally hate auto-correction, false corrections are highly annoying.

  I use Messagease on my phone. It took me around a week to get to 30 WPM. With two fingers it's possible to have around 50 WPM.

  If you are looking for alternative keyboards, I recommend to try it:

  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exideas.me...

• by jwarren on 3/18/13, 3:57 PM

  Looks interesting, but the music is mixed waaaay too high. I have to really strain to hear his voice over the background music.

• by neonkiwi on 3/18/13, 3:40 PM

  I think the ideas quickly presented near the end of the video (~1:30 onwards) are the most exciting part of this project. Right now, text entry using a video game controller isn't exactly pleasant, and there are no shortage of use cases for technologies like Google Glass where voice recognition wouldn't be appropriate. This area is ripe for innovation; good luck Minuum!

• by babesh on 3/18/13, 4:04 PM

  To summarize without having to watch 2 minutes of video: squash three rows of querty keyboard onto one row and auto-correct.

• by lukifer on 3/18/13, 5:30 PM

  I love the concept, especially if it degrades gracefully when one needs extra precision (ie, when typing things like names that are guaranteed to fail autocomplete). Looking forward to trying it out.

  This is also yet another reason for bailing out of the iOS ecosystem. Hope this finds its way to Ubuntu Mobile! :)

• by peshkira on 3/18/13, 8:38 PM

  My problem with this (as a non-native english speaker) is that such solutions often only support latin based languages and cyrillic is completely left out. This will probably make it impossible to write, as auto-complete will not work well.

  Otherwise, it looks interesting, but I am a bit skeptical. good luck to the dev team

• by bsimpson on 3/18/13, 4:00 PM

  I'm on my phone, so I can't watch the video.

  My problem with keyboards that rely too heavily on autocomplete is that it makes it too hard to use the web. Email addresses, domain names, and passwords aren't going to be in the autocomplete dictionary.

• by habosa on 3/18/13, 3:30 PM

  If the autocorrect is good this could actually be pretty neat. I found that because you stuck with QWERTY I could "eye type" on it pretty easily, unlike some other concept keyboards.

  This should really be implemented as a feature in a full-size keyboard. Like a button with a down arrow that causes the keyboard to shrink into "one dimension" when you want the screen space. Or if 1D must be the default, it should at least be able to expand to full size when a lot of typing is necessary.

• by mynegation on 3/18/13, 3:33 PM

  This project reminds me of Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End" and ensemble coding.

  I personally consider this book a must read for every aspiring entrepreneur in software and hardware.

• by _kst_ on 3/18/13, 3:23 PM

  Is there a version of the video without the music? I can barely hear what he's saying.

• by desireco42 on 3/18/13, 4:04 PM

  You guys should build it if you think it is worth building, why do you need backing for software keyboard ?!

  I am not backing this and it is getting ridiculous. And video, there should be Bootstrap for Kickstarter videos, a template you can just add to.

  I would be happy to try this out when it comes out. I expect it will not work for me as I am bilingual and those keyboards only work well for english. But good luck, don't spend all the money at one place.

• by Kartificial on 3/18/13, 3:30 PM

  Interesting approach, at first glance I was not really convinced, but seeing the possible applications in wearable electronics, this might be the ideal solution.

• by bakirtzis on 3/18/13, 9:25 PM

  There is a layout on Greek phone keyboards (not smartphones) in which every letter possibility is divided in 3 letter segments of the alphabet (i.e. one segment is ABC (or ΑΒΓ) another DEF (ΔΕΖ) and so on and so forth). Normally, you press the key as many times as the letter you wish to write (i.e. one click for A, two for B, three for C) or in this different layout you click once for a letter that exists in the word in the series that it is shown then another series in which the next letter exists etc. The phone then creates a word out of those possible letters and spits out the closest result, with no fail.

  For example, you want to write the word 'and', you press the sequence 'ABC', then 'MNO' and lastly 'DEF'. Then it creates the word 'and'.

  I haven't found something like that in American phones, albeit I use an iPhone now. It's more intuitive than it sounds and it makes texting a lot faster.

  If anybody can bring more input about this happening in English phone keyboards is welcome to do so. (It also might have a name that I am not aware of)

• by BrianEatWorld on 3/18/13, 6:47 PM

  I'm not convinced for smartphones, but the tail end of the video shows some real promise. The watch and game controller in particular.

  It is interesting that they are using QWERTY. Im curious if thats a decision based on trying to gain acceptance. It seems that if you're looking to really reinvent user input, theres likely a more ideal layout.

• by Sephr on 3/18/13, 4:14 PM

  For the part with typing for your watch and glasses, I think MYO + ASETNIOP, enabling typing on any surface (such as discreetly on your thighs) with zero interface, will be much more practical.

• by twodayslate on 3/18/13, 11:38 PM

  They should sell this on Cydia to replace the iOS default keyboard.

  It looks pretty interesting but I do not really have a problem with the default keyboard.

• by brianbreslin on 3/18/13, 4:12 PM

  Did swype ever get acquired? this looks interesting, and could be a useful acquisition target for samsung/apple/google

• by jae- on 3/18/13, 3:34 PM

  Looks like it will be painful to get used to, but we said that about the QWERTY keyboard and look where we are today.

• by johngalt on 3/18/13, 4:37 PM

  If you're interested in alternative keyboards, take a look at GKOS. It's a thumb based chorded keyboard.

  http://gkos.com/gkos/index-gkos-com.html

• by rhapsodyv on 3/18/13, 4:28 PM

  I think the keys can be grouped in way that you rarely will need to press the same key twice in a row. The typing speed could be increased and would be less words options for each typed sequence. It's just a though...

• by DanBC on 3/18/13, 8:57 PM

  This has some potentially amazing possibilities for accessible devices. I hope they get some people with various limbs and digits missing for testing.

  (The music drowns out the voice! That's a shame.)

• by ivanb on 3/18/13, 4:33 PM

  Tests will show how correct it will be. May I suggest to also try swype with this?

• by Shorel on 3/19/13, 1:55 AM

  I want this in Ubuntu phone.

• by namuol on 3/18/13, 4:28 PM

  I think the most interesting use of this would be typing via eye-tracking.

• by k4st on 3/19/13, 12:50 AM

  Off topic: This was filmed in the Bahen building at U of T! Go DGP!

• by dools on 3/18/13, 10:24 PM

  Ugh, just give me back my candybar qwerty already!

• by miguelrochefort on 3/18/13, 4:26 PM

  Yet, it's still in QWERTY.

• by Nightrider on 3/18/13, 7:19 PM

  If they could jimmy something up for the Windows phone, I'd be very happy. Its a great idea and aesthetically it looks cool.

• by drivebyacct2 on 3/18/13, 5:28 PM

  >Fact

  >People have difficulty typing on mobile devices. (Your experience may vary.)

  Uh.