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From: adams@math.berkeley.edu (Jeffrey P. Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: one-finger keyboard
Message-ID: <1989Oct16.012114.23142@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 16 Oct 89 01:21:14 GMT
References: <1989Oct6.221013.8269@agate.berkeley.edu> <1259@cbnewsj.ATT.COM> <783@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <MEF.89Oct13184703@dalek.silvlis.com>
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Reply-To: adams@math.berkeley.edu (Jeffrey P. Adams)
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In-reply-to: mef@dalek.silvlis.com (Mary Ellen Foley)

In article <MEF.89Oct13184703@dalek.silvlis.com>, mef@dalek (Mary Ellen Foley) writes:

>I kind of figured a one-finger keyboard would be good for ...
>[various plausible explanations omitted] ...   I dunno,
>will the original poster please stand up and explain?

Okay.  Consider me standing.

I can envision a couple of applications for a one-fingered keyboard:

1.  (as Ms. Foley suggested) Handicapped people may not have the
    use of individual fingers, or they may need to type with a stick
    held in their teeth or attached around their heads, or whatever.
    They, then, are performing "one-fingered" typing.

2.  Hand-held computers / memory aids / phone dialers.  In all of the
    examples of these I have seen, the size of the device and the size
    of the keys are such that the user typically holds the device in
    one hand, and pokes at the keys with the index finger of the other
    hand.  A particular drawback to these (potentially very useful)
    pocket-sized devices is that the QWERTY keyboard, while well-known,
    is not at all suited to the task.  Some of the most common letter
    combinations require jumping across the entire keyboard.  Also, the
    size of the QWERTY keyboard is effectively 3 rows of 10 keys, making
    it difficult to arrange a keyboard on anything that will fit in a
    pocket.

3.  I imagine that there would be situations where someone with restricted
    finger dexterity (in particular, if they're wearing heavy gloves or
    the like) may need to enter data into a keyboard.  An astronaut on
    a spacewalk, for example, may need to type something while wearing
    a spacesuit.

I should say by way of disclaimer that I am not an engineer, and have
very little experience in ergonomics, per se.  I am a mathematician, and
am particularly interested in mathematical approaches to language-related
problems.  My approach in this problem has been to find an arrangement of
the keys which would minimize the expected key-to-key distance traveled
in the course of typing "normal" text.

The purpose of my original posting was to see if anyone had already
addressed the problem, solicit suggestions from you who know more about
human factors than I, and to try and brainstorm up some other uses for
the one-fingered keyboard when I find one I'm happy with.

Thanks to all of you who have replied, either by email or on the net.
Any further replies are still welcomed and encourages.  Thanks.

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          Jeff Adams                 adams@math.berkeley.edu    
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