Ask HN: Are there any mature non-mouse and non-keyboard input methods?

5 points·wakkaflokka··2 comments

Are there any input methods that are non-mouse based and non-keyboard based for a PC that are mature enough to use for daily use?

Dictation? Gestures? Eye-tracking?

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Very broad question, there are a lot, but they differ in purpose, efficiency and "target" user. I don't think there is a more efficient text input device that [some kind of] keyboard or as accurate and unrestricted pointing device as mouse (touch is close, but requires proper UI) for an average user.

Touch made a great leap in performance, compare today's smartphone (taps, double taps, "3D touch", slides, multi-touch) to an old Palm device (stylus required, unregistered inputs etc.).

Speech recognition is pretty well developed, works great for note-taking, control with short commands, but it depends on a language (some are working better than others) and is prone to error, especially with non-native speakers (accents) or unfriendly environment (noise, multiple people talking, changing volume). Would it be comfortable to dictate a book or code? Probably not.

Kinect, ZKOO and Leap Motion are probably the most popular gesture tracking device, but amount of required energy makes these very inefficient for daily tasks - it's ok to get a bit tired when playing a game, but couple hours of "minority report action" would be very uncomfortable.

In addition to that there are devices like "magic wand" or Eyegaze/Tobi (eye/attention tracking), they are mature for a certain group.

We have vast amount of advanced input methods, they just shine in different areas.

Check out Dasher, it's like a text inference engine where you zoom through a 2D space to select the letters, words, phrases you want. It's agnostic to input type, you can use it with a regular mouse, or eye-tracking, or a touchpad, etc.

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/

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