Keyboard Enhanced Interface for GUI Navigation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current input devices, such as keyboards, mice, and touchscreens, face limitations in efficiently navigating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and invoking output actions due to spatial dependence, fine motor skills requirements, and inconsistency in key combinations, leading to delays and inefficiencies in GUI navigation and text insertion.
Innovation Solution
The development of a Keyboard Enhanced Interface (KEI) system that adapts keyboard keys for direct output action invocation by analyzing incoming events and system parameters to generate enhanced events, allowing for seamless integration with existing input devices and interfaces, enabling direct invocation of output actions through a dynamic visual reference and touch-sensitive keys.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If mouse or touchscreen input devices are used to navigate GUI and invoke output actions, then spatial flexibility is improved, but invocation speed deteriorates due to spatial identification requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the keyboard into multiple functional zones with different input modes (text input zone, GUI navigation zone, application-specific zone). Each zone can be independently activated and configured, allowing users to switch between discrete key presses for text and spatially-organized keys for GUI navigation, thereby maintaining both text input capability and fast GUI invocation speed
Solution Approach 2:
The keyboard implements dynamic reconfiguration of key functions and layouts based on the active application or task context. The system can dynamically switch between different input modes (e.g., from text input to GUI navigation mode) and adjust key mappings in real-time, enabling the keyboard to adapt its behavior to optimize both text insertion and GUI interaction performance
2Productivity
If discrete key combinations are used to invoke output actions, then text input capability is maintained, but ease of operation deteriorates due to inconsistent key combinations across applications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal keyboard interface that can perform multiple functions: text input, GUI navigation, and application-specific controls. The system provides a unified layer that translates various input methods (including modified key combinations) into standardized actions, making the keyboard versatile enough to handle both text input and GUI interaction without requiring users to learn application-specific key combinations
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary software layer between the keyboard hardware and the operating system applications. This intermediary layer captures key combinations, interprets them according to the current context (application state, active mode), and translates them into appropriate actions. It acts as a mediator that standardizes key combination handling across different applications, providing consistent behavior while maintaining text input capability
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple input devices are alternated for GUI navigation and text insertion, then functional versatility is improved, but invocation speed deteriorates due to switching delays
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the functionality of multiple input devices (keyboard, mouse, touchscreen) into a single unified keyboard interface. The keyboard is divided into different zones that can simulate mouse clicks, perform touchscreen gestures, or execute direct commands, eliminating the need to physically switch between devices. Users can access both text input and GUI navigation functions from the keyboard, maintaining versatility while avoiding switching delays
Data Source
AI summary
Some embodiments provide a device, method, system, computer program product and user interface for pointer movement analysis with modal continuous controller conversion. Specifically, some embodiments adapt movements issued from a mouse input device, trackpad, or touchscreen to adjust a position of a UI element. Some embodiments analyze a first set of movements and adapt a subsequent second set of movements to adjust the position of the UI element within a range of UI element positions when the first set of movements satisfies a movement threshold. The movement threshold includes a spiral pattern. In some embodiments, adjusting the position of the UI element includes performing scrolling within a scroll area based on the second set of movements when the first set of movements satisfies the spiral pattern.