Photo by Ishtiaque Hossain on Unsplash

QWERTY keyboards have been around for over a century now. Created by the Remington company, the design of the keyboard dates back to the invention of the typewriter. Surprisingly and despite some minor improvements, keyboards have not changed from typewriters to our current smartphones. The layout of the letters has been adapted to other languages to give the French AZERTY for example but this is a rather minor evolution.

Being in the age of disruption of everything and anything, we are entitled to wonder why this invention has evolved little in a century.

The keyboard is an optimized response to a need: to enter information on a medium, the computer. The keyboard is therefore linked to another ancestral technology: writing. Therefore, as long as we have to write using a computer, the keyboard will be the most adequate solution. The shapes and positions of the keys can be improved, but as long as we have to write and as long as we use computers, we will need keys to enter the letters of our words.

However, there are some evolutions around keyboards, some just change the look and others try to reinvent it totally. Here are 4 types of keyboards that I think are interesting in the change of use they bring.

Photo by Editors Keys on Unsplash

Virtual keyboards

The most used keyboards today are virtual. On all phones and tablets since the iPhone in 2008 a keyboard appears on the touch screen when it is consistent to write something.

Doing without a physical keyboard has been one of the biggest innovations around keyboards. This logic has been declined in various formats:

• Touch keyboards.
  These are virtual keyboards projected on a touch screen. This type of keyboard has the advantage of being elegant, as it is often made of glass, and modular, meaning that you can switch from an AZERTY keyboard to a QWERTY or a Japanese keyboard with one click.
  The appearance of the keys is also customizable. The disadvantage is that you have to carry a slab, as for a classic keyboard. This technology would be especially useful in the case of a work surface entirely covered with a touch screen, i.e. a touch table.
  My favorite is Fucktron, just for the fun of the name.

Fucktron keyboard on sputnikgoods.com

• Laser keyboards
  They are actually miniature projectors.
  Designed to simplify text entry when working on the phone, this product is primarily intended for digital nomads.
  Its use cases are rather towards the punctual use in case of reduced space or impossibility of using physical material. The tests seem to be satisfactory regarding the reaction time and the precision of the keys.
  It is a perfect technology for minimalists.

Laser keyboard on Wikipédia

• VR keyborad
  When working in VR, sometimes you have to type text and pointers are perfectly inefficient for that. Virtual keyboards are therefore created to make typing easier. The lack of haptic feedback (touch sensation) being disturbing, it is now possible to use a physical keyboard that the headset reproduces in the virtual space.

Oculus VR keyboard on wanda-techs.com

Keyboards without keys

A keyboard being a set of keys, the best way to disrupt it would be to do without these keys. This is what some companies are trying to do by creating gloves or rings.
Two principles coexist:

• Simulate a keyboard
  Everyone is more or less able to type on a keyboard without looking at the keys, so it is conceivable to create a system like Airtype where you type on a surface and the device understand which key your gesture corresponds to.
  The idea is interesting but it does not lend itself to the input of complicated words, special characters and must be adapted to cultural differences.
• Recreating a keyboard
  Keyboarding concepts involve entering letters with a specific combination of fingers. The placement of the fingers does not matter, it is the simultaneous contact between several fingers that dictates what is written. The Tap Strap 2 is a good example.
  The concept of disruption is pushed to the extreme since you have to relearn how to type text from scratch, which will discourage most. As for typing performance, it doesn’t seem to be any better than with a conventional keyboard. It should be noted that you need great dexterity to type quickly. This technology would be better suited to contexts where there is absolutely no space for equipment, or need for discretion. One can think of spying where sending a message would be easier by tapping your leg or fingers than by taking out a phone.

Specialized keyboards

There are keyboards that are out of the ordinary. They do not look at all like our classic keyboards because they are specialized for an activity

• stenography
  Shorthand keyboards are divided into two parts for vowels and consonants. By typing several keys at the same time, they capture a word.
  Thanks to this optimization of the keyboards, the stenographers will type a word by gesture, allowing them to type as fast as we speak and thus to transcribe texts.
• Video games
  Gamers are very attached to their keyboards, simple and efficient. But as most of the keys are not used, some keyboards reduce their size and contain only a dozen keys sufficient to play.
  Azeron takes this concept a step further by creating a specialized keyboard where each finger has a button in front, behind and above it, offering a new gaming experience.

Azeron keyboard on Azeron.eu

The electronic pens and sheets

The last innovation presented in this article is paradoxically a return to the source with a digital filter on top.
It is possible to write by hand with a special pen and paper that will transcribe the letters drawn in a word processor.
This technology will delight handwriting enthusiasts but is not necessarily suitable for text entry. The keyboard is adapted to word processing modes and you will type faster than you can write.
However, digital pens are superior to keyboards in one area: free input. This is what the Eink electronic notebook offers, it allows free note taking, then the “flying” sheets are stored online and easily accessible. In this case, not being forced to write online makes the pen more efficient than the keyboard.

Eink tablet on eink.com

The keyboard is one of those simple inventions that allow you to write what you want on a computer. For the moment, nothing can match it, although different shapes and configurations of keys may eventually replace it. The QWERTY and AZERTY could be replaced by the BÉPO in France which is recommended by the national norms organization.

It seems that this technology will continue to exist for many years, it will be declined in virtual reality spaces and partially replaced for non-professional uses by the voice which does not lend itself to the professional world nor to complex input.