Free Advice to Keyboard Inventors

Dear Dr. Inventor,

You do have an interesting concept, and we might be interested in working with you. Keep in mind, however, that I have literally seen 20 innovative hardware input mechanisms invented; most of which have not made it to market.

Indeed, the only one not invented by the manufacturer that I know of is Fastap, a company who started business development for this in 1999. In fact, it was the inventor trying to sell the idea to Sprint's Usability group, of which I was a member, that introduced it to me. From 1999 to 2008, 10 years, Fastap has only launched on a small number of phones for small operators. LG, for example, has two Telus Mobility Fastap devices.

Why is this? Because the manufacturers will not spend the money on it unless they know they can sell it to the operators. The operators will not buy it if it costs them money, even if it will make them money. And it is very easy for them to justify why your product is not actually as good as you say it is, no matter how good it is.

If it costs more than about 1USD per unit, you have a probable failure. More than about 4USD, and you have a certain failure.

Many alternative keyboard manufacturers, such as FrogPad and Keynetik, are going after smaller markets such as military or industrial workers. You might find some traction there, for much less money. But of course you will not get the GreatNewKeyboard on every phone that way. And you will need to work with someone in business development who knows those markets.

So before investing our time in your product, we would need to know that you had assembled the capital and business development expertise to move forward. You probably need more than two million dollars: some for re-design, some for responding to operators' requests that will take you nowhere, some to keep you fed, some to do usability tests, some to make prototype units, but most to sustain a business development effort that will leave everybody exhausted.

If you find this money and the right business development team, do come back to us. We can definitely help. But our help would be wasting your money right now.

Sincerely,

Barbara Ballard

President

Little Springs Design

Good advice.

Ironically, for all the resistance to changing the mobile phone keypad, it is probably the second most annoying aspect of mobile phones, next to, “can you hear me now?”

The problem is, all keypads to date have suffered from one or more compromises – generally slow typing, uncomfortably tiny buttons, forced two-hand operation, extra keystrokes, forced decision making, non-QWERTY layouts, compromised (too wide) form factors, ambiguous results, long learning curves, complex operation, etc.

People want instant speed, comfort, and simplicity.

The GreatNewKeyboard will immediately win over the majority of people who try it. That’s what closes the deal at the phone kiosk (happy manufacturers) and also compels users to begin and continue using text-entry related, revenue generating wireless services (happy carriers).

Finally, manufacturers will sometimes pay for consumer testing, but only if your prototype drastically out-performs everything else out there. Bring your stopwatch.

A moblie phone needs a small size keyboard, remaining fast operation as that of an ordinary PC. Is there a keyboard like this?
http://opqrest.blog.sohu.com/82042354.html

BIGDREAM: No, I’ve not seen anything quite like that. I have seen some joystick type things, I remember that they are like Thumbscript (see our wiki page on one-handed text input> but with joysticks.

I hereby introduce a new way of reducing the size of a keyboard remaining fast input.
http://opqrest.blog.sohu.com/82042354.html
How do you think about this?

There is a new way of reducing the size of a keyboard remaining fast input. One motion one input.
http://opqrest.blog.sohu.com/82042354.html
http://opqrest.blog.sohu.com/96542247.html

BIGDREAM: A two-function joystick has both strengths and weaknesses. To move forward, you need to make a functioning prototype to show to people, get a degree of interest from somebody who can purchase them, then go get around two million dollars to invest in further business development, marketing, and prototyping efforts for a couple years.

Ultra-Mobile-PC=Ultra-Mini-Projector + Ultra-Mini-Keyboard

If such an UMPC is produced, all the laptops, the cell phones and the PDAs will find the same way.

UMPC=UMP+UMK

the newest model of keyboard for sale

figures STILL sparking @ http://pp.sohu.com/slideview-357007-24146083.html
have a look and have a shock

An UMP throws an image of 3 to 30 inches diagonal onto a plastic plate as a screen. Once a laser image is obtained up in the air, there will be no more screens.

An UMK has only 4 key positions scattered evenly on a circle. If the circle is pressed, it will show another 4 key positions. Thus there are 8 key positions to give 11 routes:

2 lines to the left or the right, 2 lines to the top or the bottom, 2 circular lines, 2 spiral lines, 1 vertical line, 2 diagonal lines.

To move along a circular or spiral line, the circle should be lower than the surroundings.

Each line is after another so that it is unnecessary to leave the surface. As a result, the input of one key position is twice as fast as before. 11 routes equal 11*11=121 buttons.

There are over 1 billion PCs to the present around the world. As for the cell phones, the number is much larger.

The invention ownership is up for sale by January 7th, 2009, for 1% worldwide costs US$100,000. Each share is US$400. Please feel free to contact boek@sohu.com for payment.

BIGDREAM: This isn’t a good forum to attempt to sell an invention, and you are not following the advice in the original post. Or in my comment back to you in August.

Everybody else: You are seeing a typical interaction played out here. He is not going to get $100k for 1% (which assumes that his invention before being developed out or investing in marketing is worth $10m). Purchasing such an invention means spending another $6m in product development and business development. Since he does not have that money, the investor will have to pony that up. So this idea is worth $70m (profit)? Highly unlikely. I don’t recommend investing in trying to develop this idea.

How do you think about this Double Way Keyboard
http://opqrest.blog.sohu.com/110326905.html
Editor’s note: the link above takes a while to load, but we did not notice anything malicious about it.

I have made a slide show of the Double Way Keyboard @ http://pp.sohu.com/slideview-507055-24146083.html
I do not know whether it is appropriate to attach the link here.

I concur. Novel hardware input devices are even more difficult to sell than software improvements to existing keyboards, and the founders of Tegic (T9 Text Input software) barely survived the start-up phase.

I addressed this invention space in my own article,
http://www.designer-software.com/articles.html

I have advised other Dr. Inventors to invest some of that $2M+ in a formal set of user studies to evaluate and measure:

1. initial acceptance, pick-up-and-try success and performance
2. longer-term learning curve and projected expert performance

They’ll need the study results to get the manufacturers and/or operators to take them seriously. MacKensie and colleagues set the standard for mobile text input performance tests.