On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 10:47:51AM +0000, the hatter wrote: > > Between us, we've tried pretty much every input device that money can buy > > (as one of the general remits of our research): regular keyboards, ergo > > keyboards, chording keyboards, split keyboards, twiddlers, mice, trackballs, > > tablets, pens, speech interfaces, haptic interfaces, etc. We've even > > invented a couple as well, the latest of which is based around a toy gun > > and reflective bicyle tape. > > And I can get your job how, exactly ?
Apply for it. http://www.cre.canon.co.uk/jobs/index.htm Well, you can't apply for *my* job there (I hope) but there are 2 jobs posted there right now. The toy gun is for a particularly elegant hardware hack that mrp has been playing with for some time. He started with a Softboard which is a large whiteboard with laser scanners. You use special pens with reflective tape around the end which the laser uses to detect where you're drawing. Martin knocked out the whiteboard, replaced it with a sheet of glass with a shower curtain stuck to it (to get the right translucence) and back-projected the output from a PC onto it. Then he wrote XFree86 input drivers to take the pen data and turn it into mouse events. The end effect is that you've got a wall size desktop and you use pens to control the pointer. We found out that reflective bicycle tape works just fine so we wrapped it around the shaft of the suction pad "bullet" that gets fired out of a toy gun. Now you can fire the gun at the screen from the other side of the office, the suction pad sticks to the screen and the laser picks it up as a mouse click. More fun than a laser pointer :-) > > Qwerty/Dvorak layout probably matters less than having a keyboard shape > > that you're happy with, that allows you to type for longer and with less > > fatigue. > > Has your research come to any conclusions about clickiness of keys, > another strongly contentious point amoung keyboard users ? I should point out that the research I've done has been very informal (also known as "playing around" to see what works and what doesn't) so there aren't any published papers or technical reports drawing any firm conclusions. Martin has written a couple of technical reports, but I don't think there's anything covering keyboard clickiness. Pen-based interaction is much more his thing (gesture recognition, etc). But I do recall seeing something in the CHI proceedings from either this year or last on key clicking. I'll see if I can find it. A
