Tag: Tactile

I really like the iPad – it’s a great tablet. I am not a huge fan of the on-screen keyboard though. I also don’t really like to have to carry a bulky external keyboard with me either.

This might just be the most beautiful keyboard I’ve ever laid eyes on. Each key cap on this modified Apple keyboard is cut from sandblasted lumber, providing a ridged, tactile feel under fingertips.

If there’s one complaint that people have about E-book readers (besides the fact that they’re not flexible yet), it’s that they don’t really replicate the feel of a real book. A team of researchers in Japan aims to change that, by creating a tactile feedback mechanism for digital books.

I love to play games on my iPad, but I have to say that with games that use a virtual on-screen joystick, I really miss the feeling of a true analog stick. Well, thanks to this new gadget, that problem has come to an end.

CMU researcher Chris Harrison’s Skinput is an amazing new technology. It’s a new interface concept that just makes sense, and to top it off, it’s also pretty darn cool. Input devices haven’t changed much in the last few decades.

If you’re an avid iPhone user, but long for the tactile feel of a real keyboard, this might just make your day. 4iThumbs new overlay screen gives your touchscreen keys you can actually feel when you press them.

While many of you might like the industrial design of the keyboards that Apple has been churning out for the last several years, I still long for keys that FEEL like keys. Thankfully, the guys over at Matias have the same sentiment and are getting ready to release a new Mac keyboard with REAL keys, not those wimpy “chiclet” buttons.

Touchscreens these days mostly allow us to use our fingers like a mouse cursor – point, click, slide etc. Designer Seonkeun Park wants to make a phone for the blind, with a screen and keypad that can form Braille symbols.

As much as I dig my iPhone and HP Touchsmart touchscreens, there’s something that I still miss about actually feeling buttons under my fingertips. And while I’ve gotten pretty good at typing without even looking at the screen anymore, I’ll never achieve the kind of touch typing speed I’ve hit on a traditional keyboard.

I sit at a computer much of the day and always thought I was a pretty fast typer. But apparently, those pesky painted letters on my key caps are actually slowing me down. Thankfully, there’s a new keyboard that gets rid of the tiny bit of extra drag that those characters put on my tapping fingertips.

Instead of using a traditional 2-dimensional display surface, Shade Pixel renders information using a deformable skin surface which provides a 3-dimensional texture to its output. Developed by researchers at the Design Media Lab at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the device uses a dot-matrix array of solenoids attached to a flexible Spandex skin.

Do you love the iPhone, but struggle with the smooth on-screen keyboard? Personally, I’ve found it pretty easy to use, but the touchscreen definitely doesn’t offer the touch-typing feedback that you get with physical keys. This new, low cost screen overlay for the iPhone claims to provide tactile cues to your fingertips to help them find their way.

One of the biggest problems with touchscreen interfaces is the lack of any sort of tactile feedback. In response to this concern, Samsung has released a touchscreen phone with Immersion’s VibeTonz haptic feedback system. The Samsung SCH-W559 phone provides users with a vibration that approximates the sensation of a key click when they interact with the phone’s touchscreen.