Some Ideas on the Mobile Keypad

Mobile Keypad

Obviously, we all use our phones in a different way than a keyboard or a typewriter, so I often wonder why we use the QWERTY setup. Typing taught to us at younger ages involved correct posture, proper hand position and no peeking at the keys. These tenets simply no longer matter on handheld devices.

What this means is that there seems to be little need for these 20th century conventions on our mobile phones - other than the familiarity makes us feel good. Now, in fairness, there are some mobile experiences (E.g. larger tablets) where users may actually be able to type old school style. It is for this reason, that I would think that QWERTY conventions should still be kept alive through users settings and options.

However, given the obvious usability issues on mobile devices, there is probably some room for improvement. I propose ideas on a number of fronts.

Give the keys size priority based on how often they are used

Let's see if we can break the QWERTY convention. The old convention seems less useful for people typing with their thumbs as I assume most of us will be looking at the keypad. I'm sure there are reasons for the QWERTY layout (which I haven't really researched) on a typewriter - key proximity etc. that could probably be considered and translated to a new convention. The MOBILE convention.

My redesign is simply a proposal to enhance usability. The most commonly used keys are given priority in terms of size. This will reduce typos. They have also been moved to the 'thumb hotzones'. While letters like 'Q' and 'X' have been moved to the 'thumb deadzones'.

Contextually enable/disable

Contextually enable and disable invalid key combinations. For example if you type a 'Q' most of the the keys on the keypad would be disabled as invalid key combinations.

Keys inactive depending on context. Note- darkening probably would not be this obvious as the flashing would be very distracting as you type.(or maybe small dashes appear on the keys - something too subtle for a static pic)

Settings

Make these keyboard layouts a selectable setting. Give the users what they want and allow them to use the devices how they want to.

For example, if a hipster wanted to type 'rotfl' or 'lmao' they would turn off the contextual keyboard setting. If a user was using their device for business purposes they would probably want it enabled.

Settings could look like this

• Slang
• Business
• Business Contextual
• QWERTY
• QWERTY Contextual

Swipe Punctuation/The Punctuation Key

Let's consider what I've named 'swipe puncuation'. Let's get rid of the period, question mark and comma. Maybe we could break our messaging into 'sentence containers' when you finish a sentence swipe the punctuation key right for a question and left for a statement (down for a comma) on the 'punctuation key'. This would allow us to make some of the keys even bigger because we could reduce the key set by 2.