Dynamic Keyboard Layout with Segmented Keys for Mobile Input
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional touch screen keyboards on mobile devices face challenges due to small key sizes and proximity, leading to increased typographical errors, especially for users with larger fingers, and speech recognition alternatives pose privacy concerns.
Innovation Solution
A user interface apparatus that displays a reduced keyboard layout with combinational input keys, allowing users to input characters by moving one key to another within a threshold distance or overlapping area, thereby reducing the number of visible keys and enhancing intuitive input.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a QWERTY key arrangement is displayed on a limited display, then all characters can be accessed, but key size becomes small and typographical errors increase
Solution Approach 1:
The keyboard is segmented into multiple pages, with each page displaying a subset of keys. Users can navigate between pages to access different character sets. This segmentation allows each page to display fewer, larger keys while maintaining comprehensive character coverage across all pages.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a temporal dimension through page navigation, transforming the spatial constraint problem into a time-based solution. Instead of displaying all keys simultaneously in space, the system provides access to all keys across multiple pages over time, allowing each displayed page to have larger key sizes.
2Adaptability or versatility
If more keys are displayed to cover all characters, then character coverage is complete, but keys become smaller and harder to identify
Solution Approach 1:
The keyboard layout is divided into multiple pages, each displaying a specific set of keys. This segmentation allows each page to show fewer keys with larger sizes, improving visibility and identification. The complete character set remains accessible through page navigation.
Solution Approach 2:
The keyboard interface is made dynamic through page navigation, allowing the displayed keys to change based on user interaction. This dynamic approach enables the system to present optimized key layouts for different character sets, improving both identification and accessibility.
3Productivity
If speech recognition is used for text entry, then typing speed may improve, but privacy risks and recognition accuracy issues arise
Solution Approach 1:
The keyboard interface supports multiple input methods including direct key pressing, drag gestures, and page navigation. This multi-functionality provides users with alternative input methods that maintain typing speed while avoiding privacy risks associated with speech recognition.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces gesture-based intermediaries (drag gestures) as a middle ground between traditional typing and speech recognition. These gestures enable efficient text entry without requiring voice output, thus maintaining privacy while improving input speed.
4Ease of operation
If traditional QWERTY layout is used, then familiar key positions are maintained, but users with larger fingers experience input errors
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting the keyboard into multiple pages with fewer keys per page, the physical distance between adjacent keys increases. This segmentation maintains the familiar QWERTY sequencing while reducing input errors for users with larger fingers through increased spacing.
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus for providing a user interface, which provides a keyboard layout, is provided. A display portion of a user interface apparatus displays a portion of a plurality of keys that are included in the keyboard layout, and provides individual input keys of at least a predetermined size inside a display area that is limited by not displaying the portion of the plurality of keys. The keys which are displayed on the display portion comprise a first input key, which is allocated to a first character, and a second input key, which is allocated to a second character that differs from the first character. In this case, when a sensor portion detects user input with respect to the first input key, and the first input key moves to a position of the second input key by means of the user input, so that the first input key comes closer to the second input character to be at a distance shorter than a predetermined critical value, a processor decides a third character, which differs from the first and second characters, as a current input value that corresponds to the user input, wherein the third character corresponds to a character which is not separately displayed as an individual input key by the display portion.