Your keyboard can be much better
Second part: new experiments with the keyboard layout
Previously, I was searching for a better character placement and keyboard layout. At that point, I tried to save similarities with popular keyboards.
I’m happy with the result and didn’t want to stop on that. My new experiments show some pretty interesting ideas. So here’s the second part of my experiments with the keyboard layout.
I don’t want to limit myself, except only try a more symmetrical look. First, let’s see what happens if all of the keys will be the same size.
Here’s the first issue. The bottom row is the simplest one to fix because there’s the space key. We’re using it a lot, so it should stay pretty large and fill that gap on the right. I didn’t bother with enter and shift keys. I’m not sure how often basic computer users like myself are using this shift key, and do they at all, so I decide to delete it and make the enter key bigger, like a cliche alarm button.
For sure it’s not the best way of filling the area, but let’s continue for now. Next dilemma I faced was whether to leave the arrows on three keys or split them up into four. Big brother helped me with this one. Around that time I accidentally came across a pill box from the middle of the last century, designed by Fred Troller.
Visually it’s a perfect match. This composition inspired me to use triangular elements as the shape of arrow keys. I’ll use it for a new look, and for now, I placed them as a group of four instead of that big enter key. This combination has the most sense among others. As a result, the enter key became a long, horizontal space-alike key.
Now it’s time to use triangular arrow keys and clean up all proportions, colors, typography, small details like tactile hints, etc. Of course, everything was designed with taking into account my native Ukrainian language. Here’s my final design.
And as a dessert let’s talk about a virtual copy of this keyboard. Virtual keyboards usually work as an additional input source. Keep in mind that the basic symbols are kind of coordinates for others. It helps you to navigate between symbols with shift and option keys. In my opinion, a virtual copy should always highlight these coordinates, so you could keep working with the keyboard, without switching to the mouse every time you need some specific symbol like “∆” for example. At this point, I was searching for a good placement of these highlights and found out that using the bottom left corners is the best way because of the location of the shift and option keys down there relative to the rest of the letters.
Imagine a virtual assistant, opened on top of all windows, which allows you to keep the focus on the text and make it easier to find the wanted character.
For me, it’s a very unusual concept. To be honest, I have no idea how it’s gonna go, but I want to give it a shot. Of course, we can argue about its usefulness, yet in vain since only long-term testing of a physical prototype will give an objective answer. It takes some time to build and test it out, and I’m looking forward to doing it. For sure I’ll publish all the details after that. So feel free to follow my profile if you’re interested. Thank you.
