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Comment by digi_owl | Hacker News Reader

And that is where the vibrate comes in.

the keyboard is of a known layout, and by marking by feel when you move from one key to the next you know where you are.

This allows the keyboard to be operated without looking, much like how most people use a ordinary keyboard today once they are past the hunt-and-peck stage.

A big reason for touch screens being a problem in many situations is that you have to actually look at it to operate it. Physical buttons, switches and knobs can be operated by touch alone.

Frankly way too much of modern computing relies on sight and sight alone.

Also, allowing someone to rest on the keyboard is why long typing sessions are not such a strain on the hands. Without it, the writs has to carry the weight of the fingers continually.

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I'm guessing you downvoted me because you disagree with my point of view. I'll just tell you this: I have been thinking a lot about the stuff you talk about here and even prototyped a hardware device to try out the idea. I had the same point of view (It would be nice to have an input device I can use without even looking) but after experimenting I realized this isn't the case.

Also this "vibration" thing you're talking about--it's obvious you haven't thought deeply about this because if you took at least a couple of hours thinking more about how this would work you would realize vibration itself has nothing to do with this". I have had a phone that gave you nice tactile feedback using vibration (Prada phone), and while it does feel nice, it doesn't do anything in terms of letting me know my input was correct.

Anyway this all doesn't mean anything if you don't really believe me. So let me ask you a rhetorical question: Do you think you will be able to type into a blackberry absolutely without looking at the keyboard? Also, when exactly would you be typing while NOT looking at a mobile screen? Even on a blackberry people have to look at the screen to make sure they didn't mistype something (Even with all that tactile feedback). On a desktop computer typing without looking makes sense because that's the mode in which people use the device (whereas on a mobile phone the screen and the keyboard are attached so looking at the screen means also looking at the keyboard)

Anyway if you really believe in these ideas, you should at least try an MVP or any simple experiment (or maybe even some thought experiment) before being so sure about it.

The Steam gamepad and the Macbook's new touchpads can simulate tactile borders and shapes on the surface with controlled vibration.

Combine with pressure detection and you can make Swype / SwiftKey provide a sense of where you're dragging your finger when swipe typing, plus that you can put emphasis on the right letters easily when swiping across groups of letters that would make for different words, making for better precision in the word suggestions.

It would also be much easier to implement gesture support by having areas much easier to target that you start gestures from or end them in. You'd also instantly get tactile feedback telling you if you made the gesture right or not, like for switching character sets or for moving the cursor.

Lots of gestures could be supported, where you'd essentially be "asked" with tactile feedback to push harder after making the gesture to activate the particular action. Suddenly you solved both accessibility, discoverability and precision, while reducing the error rate.

What you say doesn't change anything significantly, which means it doesn't change the way we type on mobile phones--you still need to look at the screen. Also it's a bit of a stretch thinking because it works on a game controller with limited number of inputs, it will work on a keyboard with way more keys, isn't it?

As I mentioned above, I explored into building a mobile device that you can type into without looking, and my first hypothesis was "tactile feedback is key". And turns out there are many many other factors at play. Even if Apple built something like you say, that won't make more people buy iPhones, it's just an incremental innovation that doesn't significantly change any user behavior for the better.

Like you said, you still need look at the screen to see if you're typing in correctly. I am not sure if you read my original comment, but this is one thing I learned while experimenting that's obvious in hindsight. On your computer, you can type completely without looking at your keyboard because you are looking at the monitor/screen which is a separate device from the keyboard. On a mobile device, they are a single screen. Which means you still have to look at the screen portion of the "screen" even when you don't need to look at the "keyboard" portion. Which is why it doesn't make any groundbreaking improvements even if implemented. At best it's just some minor add-on convenience. Your steam controllers example is exactly the same as computer keyboards because you're looking at a large screen (which is again a separate device from your gamepad) when you're playing games.

Your assumption is that they only help accuracy. Instead they can allow you to visually hide important UX elements and yet keep them discoverable.

I'll have to think a bit longer to come up with good examples.

Edit: non-scrolling swipe gestures are where this is the most valuable.

Improved Google Photos app image selection: a hard press would start selection, and as you continously to drag to select it would provide tactile feedback for where the image borders are, making accidental selection less likely and quicker to detect. Selection would stop on release (to make scrolling easy). Hard press and swipe again to continue the selection.

If you trace this thread all the way back to its root, the guy said having tactile feedback will solve the problem of not being able to type without looking, and I said I have tried and it doesn't. Of course there are many ways tactile feedback can improve experience. But in any case, I don't think it's a significant change. Even if you could do all you mentioned it's just an incremental innovation. When iPhone first came out it changed everything by getting rid of physical keyboards because a "soft" keyboard that adapts to its container app is much more flexible than a physical keyboard. That started this entire app ecosystem. But I don't think these nifty little touch UI innovations will change anything further as far as iPhone is concerned. As an example 3d touch is an interesting and sometimes even magical technology but it hardly makes any difference in purchase decisions.

When you type in hardware keyboards, do you need to look at them? I hardly look at the SwiftKey keyboard except occasionally to confirm what keys I'm hitting.

A surface that can "project" arbitary tactile shapes with different strengths of feedback can let you orientate without looking. In fact it can even do Braille for the blind if the resolution was high enough!

Back when I used blackberry phones I absolutely could use the keyboard without looking. They used slightly different shapes/intersections for each key and it was all muscle memory and little looking.

The touch screen keyboards are more practical in many ways but they can never truly replicate a physical keyboard.

(I long ago traded the fidelity of the actual keyboard for the convenience of a touch keyboard.)

"little looking". Yeah you looked. There's a huge difference between 0% and 1%. I'm saying it's a nice to have feature but that doesn't make you ditch one for another--it's just an incremental innovation. Just like you moved away from it.

This is not Reddit. I can't downvote you because you are directly responding to me.

> This allows the keyboard to be operated without looking, much like how most people use a ordinary keyboard today once they are past the hunt-and-peck stage.

'Most people'? I must have had really bad luck in a number of financial/tech companies, as a disturbing majority don't touch type.

Note, my experience is with people aged 30-50. It's possible that this doesn't apply to millennials, but they certainly aren't the majority still.

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