Peter Skillman
Product design director, Handspring
The keyboard won't be replaced, but as communication and computing go mobile, a keyboard must do even more in a smaller space and with one hand. This means reinventing what a keyboard is. The letter P can mean "call Paula," or "launch Pac-Man." The solution is not an air keyboard that makes people self-conscious or a smarter 12-digit phone keypad. Give human beings what they love: rich tactile feel and clear ease of use.
Jakob Nielsen
Author, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicit____y ; editor, www.useit.com
Short term (2002-2004): A micro-size keyboard renaissance (e.g., BlackBerry, Treo, Danger) replaces numeric keypads as the main input technique for mobile use. Medium term (2005-2007): Handwriting recognition will become sufficiently robust to take over. Long term (2008 on): Voice recognition will have acceptably low error rates and will be superior for many applications, though pen input will remain attractive for some, so devices may ship with both.
David Gelernter
Computer science professor, Yale; chief scientist, Mirror Worlds Technolgies
The keyboard stays, but it's out of sight and out of mind. The desktop and file system are replaced by an "information beam" (my electronic docs). My main I/O tools are a mike and a joystick. When I look at the beam and speak into the mike, I can "focus" the beam to weed out irrelevant docs. When I'm creating a doc, the mike and its software work with handwriting recognition. I speak my text, see a copy onscreen, print it, write my corrections, feed it back in, and repeat - the natural way to work on text.
VIEW
The Price of Being a Fortress
Question
Long Bets
