Development of a Qwerty-Type Reduced Keyboard System for Mobile Computing: Tengo

Abstract

As mobile devices get smaller and more text applications are migrated to the mobile platform, there is an increasing demand for a text-inputting solution that is not only fast, easy and intuitive but also suitable for sustained or intensive text-inputting. Because of the space constraint and ever-shrinking form factor of mobile devices, we approached the problem using a reduced keyboard system to minimize the number of keys required. We also wanted to capture the ubiquitous QWERTY design into the reduced keyboard design to minimize re-learning and tap on existing memory mapping of keyboard layouts. The third and last design consideration was to shrink the number of keys to a minimum of 10, thus allowing each key to ultimately be able to uniquely match to each individual finger. The end objective was thus the development of a 10 key ambiguous text-inputting keyboard system that is designed for double-thumbed or double-handed typing (QWERTY characteristic).