IBM has come up with a tiny touch-based “keyboard” that uses “shorthand” for input. I saw one of the guys who invented give a presentation about the design, and it seems like a very compelling idea.
“Shorthand-Aided Rapid Keyboarding takes advantage of the expressive jotting capabilities in pen-based computing devices. It enables the user to write text in “sokgraphs,” a form of shorthand defined on a stylus keyboard as a graph. A sokgraph is the trajectory of a word defined on a stylus keyboard layout, preferably ATOMIK. Unlike traditional shorthand systems, which require much learning before using them, the user of Shorthand-Aided Rapid Keyboarding will first trace the letters of a word on the stylus keyboard. The pen trace is displayed to the user by transient digital ink and morphed to a template sokgraph. Each trial of tracing is also a trial of learning the sokgraph. Over time, the pattern of the sokgraph builds up in the user’s memory so the production of the trace becomes partly visually guided and partly memory-recall driven. As the contribution of pattern recall or open-loop action increases, the user’s dependence on visual guidance will decrease. Eventually, a user may completely remember the sokgraph and make the gesture based primarily on memory recall.”
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