KALQ Keyboard Map Could Allow Faster Thumb Typing
A team of researchers has developed the “touch optimized” KALQ keyboard layout that claims to offer faster touch typing on smartphones and tablets.
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the standard QWERTY keyboard layout is not the best suited for touchscreen devices where users primarily just use their two thumbs. A team of researchers from Montana Tech in the U.S., St. Andrews, and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany, have jointly developed the KALQ keyboard layout that they claim will make "thumb-typing faster on touchscreen devices such as tablets and large smartphones.”
The new layout splits the keyboard into two easily reachable groups of keys that allow trained users to reach 37 words per minute with the help of an “error correction algorithm.” According to the researchers, users typing on a QWERTY keyboard scored just 20 words per minute.
Dr. Kristensson, lecturer in human computer interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St. Andrews, said, "We believe KALQ provides a large enough performance improvement to incentivise users to switch and benefit from faster and more comfortable typing."
The developers will present their work at the CHI 2013 conference (the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) in Paris on May 1. The KALQ keyboard layout will be available as a free application on Google Play in the near future.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Tarun Iyer was a contributor for Tom's Hardware who wrote news covering a wide range of technology topics, including processors, graphics cards, cooling systems, and computer peripherals. He also covered tech trends such as the development of adaptive all-in-one PCs.
-
tony_g First was qwerty for typewriters, then came Dvorak to allow faster/ single hand typing on the keyboard. Now Kalq for thumb typing on a tablet. I use swype on my galaxy s2 and it works great for me on touch screens. I think the biggest problem is becoming proficient with the new layout not to mention learning it first. As long qwerty is the de facto standard, it will be hard to switch to anything else without a good reason of doing so.Reply -
NeeKo It works great if you're writing in english. As tony said, qwerty is still the best because you already know it!Reply -
curiosul QWERTY is not the best (it wasn't for a long time) but it's here to stay only because of the habitReply
Same with metric system in US or driving on the right in UK or manual transmissions ... -
teh_chem Only a couple years late. "Thumb Keyboard" has been around for iOS and Android for a really long time. In addition to splitting the keyboard when in landscape mode, I like that it adds customizable center buttons as well as cursor buttons (cursor buttons are great!).Reply
But for the most part, with a phone or a 7" tablet, swype is faster for me when I'm not actually holding my tablet. -
agnickolov Most other keyboard layouts would be faster than QWERTY (assuming they become accepted) because QWERTY was designed to slow down typing on the early typewriters.Reply -
ZinniA DX KALQ That have been broken the trend of QWERTY in iPad, & other phones to minimize the movement of thumbs. The main motive behind the design of KALQ is to save your thumbs stretching across the screen. For more info click the link below:Reply
http://outfresh.com/latest-technology/kalq-new-keyboard-layout/