Larry Garfield observes as the comeback of thumbboards is staged - and shares his thoughts on how to best design them.
Once eschewed as a waste of space, thumbboards are making a comeback. Palm OS, Pocket PC, and Linux devices are now available with integrated thumbboards instead of or in addition to handwriting recognition software. But not all thumbboards are made equal. Some are brilliant, some are terrible, none are perfect (yet). So what makes a good thumbboard? Often it is user-specific, but there are some common guidelines.
First off is the key pitch and key travel. Key pitch is the distance from the center of one key to the next, while key travel is the distance that a key moves when presses. As with desktop keyboards, both are somewhat dependent on each user's hands, but a firm key with good travel is crucial. Especially look for one that has a physical click feel, as well as the option for an audible click. Shape and size of the keys is very subjective. As always, try before you buy.
For night usage, the keys should be backlit. However, that's not as simple as it sounds. Backlight color makes a huge difference in usability. Orange, as Sony likes using, works well. Green is better. Any designer who uses a blue backlight, however, should be forced to use one for the rest of his life as punishment. Blue light is an easily diffused color, making it hard to focus on, especially when surrounded by another color. It is also very hard on the eyes. Especially if the characters are backlit instead of the whole key, reading them is almost impossible.
Especially on handhelds that skip a handwriting area in favor of a keyboard, the keyboard must offer sufficient navigation functions to replace handwritten command strokes and screen taps. (Remember, if you're thumbs are on the thumbboard then holding a stylus is very uncomfortable.) A Tab key to move to the next text field or button is therefore crucial. A tab character, meanwhile, is generally useless. Also useful are overloaded keys. Handspring's Treo line is a fine example here, where all four Application buttons have both normal and Fn+ functions, for eight different launchable apps.
Handspring's Treos also sport another very nice feature, the under-advertised "ellipsis" key (...). Since a thumbboard cannot possibly have buttons for every character and symbol Graffiti supports, tapping a letter and then ellipsis opens up a small scrollable pop-up with similar characters. For instance, the "S" key offers S, s, $ and the Graffiti Shortcut symbol. It is a very nice feature we'd like to see in wider use.
Even more, however, we'd like to see a "complete word" button. Many phones use predictive text, there's no reason why a handheld couldn't use the same system to pop up suggested words as the user types, and then have a "yeah, that one" button.
There are also a few seemingly simple features that many device manufacturers forget, making us appreciate those who think of them even more. First of all, Shift and Fn keys need to be "sticky". That is, the user should be able to type Fn+A with two taps with one finger, rather than trying to squeeze two bulky fingers together into a corner of the keyboard. It would be even better if all thumbboards had two Shift keys, as does the Sharp Zaurus SL-5600. Just as irritating is when a handheld doesn't give us an easy way to move around the text. Directional arrow keys (next to each other, please, not spread out) or even better a text-sensitive D-Pad are a must for anyone writing any serious amount of text with a thumbboard.
Nearly all of the above features exist on at least one handheld (although we don't know of one with a word complete button yet), but no manufacturer has included all of them, or even most. Hopefully that will change over time as manufacturers realize what works and what gets returned to the store. The best guideline to follow is to remember that while using a thumbboard, the user is not holding a stylus. That rules out using the screen, so all of those functions need to be keyboard accessible.
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