How Touchscreens Are Forcing the Reinvention of Keyboards
Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show, an Israel-based company called Snapkeys invited showgoers into a booth to test its new keyboard technology. Within a few minutes of using it, the company said, people were already getting the hang of Snapkeys, which consolidates the letters of the alphabet into just four keys.
The idea behind Snapkeys isn’t new; the company says it has been working on it for more than 10 years.
A snapshot of Snapkeys’ redesigned keyboard.
But the more recent emergence of touchscreen devices — and the complaints from even avid users about typing on them — means that Snapkeys’ research and development has been serendipitously well-timed.
“We think the end user is finally ready for an upgrade to the old Qwerty keyboard, after almost 150 years,” said Ryan Ghassabian, a Snapkeys business development manager. “Today, there are just too many new devices — phones, tablets — that are changing everything.”
“And Qwerty is just not meant to be on touchscreen devices,” he added.
Snapkeys is just one of a growing number of devices and applications that aim to change the way users interact with the traditional keyboard.
That doesn’t necessarily mean altering the layout of the Qwerty keyboard. The popular keyboard add-on Swype, recently acquired by Nuance, uses a standard layout, but lets users trace a word with their fingers.
While many companies work on technology for onscreen keyboards, still others are trying to create smart, ultra-portable or “invisible” keyboards.