http://sangaline.com/blog/optimizing_for_swype/
I saw this on the SwiftKey VIP forum, and then on Hacker News. I thought the measurement techniques they used might be interesting to people here, as are the results.
Colemak forum
Forum for the Colemak keyboard layout.
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Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype
- Started by jfmcbrayer
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This is an interesting article. Hopefully something more comes of it. I tried MessagEase for a long time and just couldn't get the speed up, even when I knew exactly where each letter would be. Swype is the way to go, but it's still based on Qwerty right now. There must be a better way...
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"Swype is the way to go" you say? What is the best speed people get with Swype, and what is a typical speed for its users? Because MessagEase is fast and powerful. Maybe you couldn't see it, but the numbers speak for it.
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For ordinary text, I'm faster with SwiftKey Flow than with MessageEase, but MessageEase is flexible in ways that SwiftKey is not. I can use MessageEase effectively where there is no autocompletion, and MessageEase provides control, escape, and other special characters and modifiers for use in a terminal. Therefore, both of them are useful to me.
What the article suggests is that a layout can be designed specifically for swipe style gesture typing, which is something that has not been done to date.
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I'm not sure what my speed is, but it is quite fast. I like the idea of messagease, and really tried at it, but at the end of a month and a half I was still painfully slow. Swype is a single motion for an entire word and can be quite quick when you get the hang of it.
I will try SwiftKey and see how that works.
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I'm faster with MessageEase (about 32 WPM) than with a plain QWERTY touch keyboard like Hacker's Keyboard (about 20WPM). But where SK Flow is usable, which is basically when I'm entering natural language text, I'm around 40-45 WPM.
I think my MessageEase speed is about average for people who stick with it, based on looking at the scores on the game. Some people get much, much faster, but they are definite outliers.
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I'm a slowish typist really, and I make up to 45 WPM with MessagEase now. My error rate is too high but the whole thing is fast enough that I can type without bothering with autocorrect (which always tends to trip me up — I keep switching languages for one thing). I've got the impression that my speed is fairly typical of one who sticks with MessagEase; our friends like Ghen and Pavel are making 60+ WPM look easy... :-)
(Well, Pavel is a beast and it seems he holds the world's #3 speed record now at a solid 77 WPM behind Amit at 82 and Cheng-Wei at 85; guess he doesn't quite count as your average guy then...)
Last edited by DreymaR (22-Apr-2015 23:08:59)
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Referring to the original article, does anyone know a way to custom make a swipable keyboard on your smart phone? I would like to try their optimized swipe configuration that they discuss, but I can't figure out how to.
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As far as I know, all of the swyping keyboards are proprietary (even Google Keyboard -- AOSP Keyboard doesn't have swyping), and don't let you design your own layouts. I have put in a request to SwiftKey, but I don't expect it to see fruit.
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Ha, I did, too. Maybe the public outcry will be overwhelming.
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I deleted Swype after 10 seconds of use. It doesn't show what I'm typing, and then comes up with a guess in a grossly untransparent way.
I wonder, is there an ergonomic on screen keyboard solution that DOESN'T rely on guessing based on dictionaries? I like the predictive suggestions, but autocorrect involuntarily flips me out. I'm old school, technology is supposed to OBEY ME.
A swiping entry would be nice, if it registered letters based on short pauses or tight angle turns, and would actually type the individual letters out instead of making me fly blind.
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Did you check out MessagEase yet?
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I haven't so far. Seems cool, but it's in beta, which means not in the App Store yet.
Last edited by Sigmoid (23-Apr-2015 22:24:50)
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In my sig topics, there's links to a "Colemakoid" MessagEase layout that utilizes Colemak knowledge for ease of learning and remembering. See if you like it. It can be imported directly into the MessagEase app.
Last edited by DreymaR (23-Apr-2015 22:04:16)
*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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DreymaR said:
In my sig topics, there's links to a "Colemakoid" MessagEase layout that utilizes Colemak knowledge for ease of learning and remembering. See if you like it. It can be imported directly into the MessagEase app.
Yea... Just found out that it's not out yet for iOS.
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Ah yes, there's some kind of hiccup on the Apple side. It's been out for iOS but there's some problem they're working on preventing its use now. Have patience, please.
*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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