A colleague of mine brought in an old keyboard to work today. He likes it because it has keys that don't "click". They register your key stroke when you push them down part of the way, but not all the way. So you can type "softly". He says the ergonomics are better for him than today's keyboards.
I'd never seen a keyboard like that. I think there are some cool possibilities. Imagine if you could sense
- how far the user had pressed a key, not just that they have pressed it past some threshold,
- how fast they had pressed the keys, and
- how hard they had pressed the key.
Then you could start to do some cool things when people type.
- You could dispense with the shift key when typing. To capitalize something, you could just type that letter harder than the rest.
- You could change the font size depending on how hard someone types. Typing lightly is a whisper and is shown in small text. Typing hard is a shout and is shown in large text!
- You could do the same thing by interpreting the speed of typing (which wouldn't even require a special keyboard). Slow is a whisper. Fast is a shout!
- Hmm, you could even control your mouse with a keyboard. Just drag your finger over the keys. Your computer could recognize that "asdfghjkl" or "zxdfgyu89" is not a real word (and that you're pressing the keys in a different pattern and speed than you do when you normally type), and therefore decide you must be trying to move the mouse (to the right or up and right, respectively, for my examples).
Most of this wouldn't be all that useful for people who type like I do: in fits and starts with lots of backspacing and rewriting. It could be fun if used as part of a piece of performance art. And there might be some cool ways to combine this with kinetic typography. (See links in the next post.)
The technology for this does already exist. Digital piano keyboards already have touch control, so that you can play dynamics in music.
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