Do you remember playing connect the dots in first or second grade? Drawing lines until you were delightfully rewarded with a crude drawing of a butterfly. Swype is like playing connect the dots with an onscreen keyboard. Swype is a gesture based text input method for mobile devices and tablet PCs using a stylus or fingertip, but there is no reason why it couldn’t be used with a standard PC and a mouse.
Swype was invented by Cliff Kushler and Randy Marsden who invented the T9 predictive text technology installed on most mobile phones today, and the On-Screen Keyboard bundled with Microsoft Windows respectively. According to their site there is only a few day learning curve and users can “type” between 40-50 words per minute. It seems easy enough to me, I have been tracing gestures over my laptop keyboard in anticipation of actually using Swype.
This technology is very exciting to me because I am a longtime supporter of gestures. Starting with Graffiti on my first Palm Pilot in 1997 and for the past 4 years I have used the All-in-One Gestures extension for Firefox to browse the internets. Sometimes I find myself gesturing to other applications and wondering why it ignored me.
I think Swype would make a fine upgrade to the Nintendo Wii on-screen keyboard. Because sometimes the act of selecting a letter moves the cursor off the desired letter.
Beyond text, I wonder what other uses gestural interaction will have once more people are comfortable with it. Maybe selecting or collecting icons to preform operations like copy, move, delete or open.
Here is a YouTube video
I’m really excited for this technology to Surface (get it?). I can’t wait to try out the beta.
Great commentary! I love the thought of it being implemented on the Wii. It would be great if moving the pointer around was more accurate.
Swype is a big win for Bryan’s argument of gestures over keyboard. I love keyboard shortcuts more than gestures, but I think I would be more inclined to connect the dots, than type! Hell, imagine it with multi-touch…
I posted about this to the Lebow Technology Blog. There is some debate going on over there…
I’m excited. If I owned a Wii I would most likely agree with you. I would say this would be very helpful in terms of mobile devices for people with big thumbs.
Would be nice to see this carry over into home electronic devices such as stereos and refrigerators.
Would be nice to be able to search through Pay-Per-View and on-demand menus by gesturing.