Dear All
I would like us to design a layout for 1-finger swiping input on smartphones.
After trying out many different layouts for a decade, my conclusion is that none of them is really satisfying. In my opinion the criteria used to design them do not make much sense.
A major concern I have:
I dislike swiping with my finger in the direction of my finger tip away from my hand (to the upper left, using my right index finger).
So, to me, the ideal swiping path is from the point my index points to toward my hand (when I bow down my stretched index finger).
Neither does of the layouts I found attempt to avoid the opposite direction, nor does it try to minimize such movements.
Let me describe shortly my other criteria:
(1) one character per key
(2) same size of each key
(3) keys aligned in rows: three or four rows
(4) key rows aligned on each other, so that
- either (4.1) the keys are vertically exactly in one column on top of each other
- or (4.2) the keys in vertical direction are shifted horizontally by half of their width to each other
(5) non-character keys (like comma or period) should not sit between character keys
My first approach is a 8x3 grid because it fits well on my screen.
On the left of and below the 8x3 grid there should be another column and another row for the two missing character keys and for non-character keys, resulting in a 9x4 grid.
I would put the two missing characters in the lowest row rather than in the most left column because with the right hand reaching the left column makes the most efford.
Unfortunately I could not make any layout optimizer run on my computer. So I hope your guys can perform an optimization instead.
