Inventions on reducing number of keys on a Computer Keyboard -- A TRIZ based analysis

TL;DR

This paper analyzes various inventions aimed at reducing keyboard keys using TRIZ methodology, focusing on multi-stroke mechanisms to resolve the contradiction between number of keys and functions.

Contribution

It provides a TRIZ-based analysis of inventions that reduce keyboard keys through multi-stroke mechanisms, highlighting innovative solutions to technical contradictions.

Findings

Multi-stroke mechanisms enable fewer keys for more functions

Reductions in keyboard size and increased typing speed are achieved

Various inventions utilize multi-stroke techniques to address key-function trade-offs

Abstract

A computer keyboard consists of several sections and each section consists of several numbers of keys. The text entry section contains the standard character keys, navigation section contains cursor movement and page control keys, numeric keypad contains numeric keys and function keys section contain function keys and special keys. Although the increased number of keys helps smooth interaction with a computer there are situations where it is necessary to reduce the number of keys. The need for reducing number of keys in a keyboard creates a technical contradiction. Generally more number of keys can support more number of functions and less number of keys can support less number of functions. We need more number of functions (all the functions available in a full size keyboard), but we want only less number of keys (Contradiction). This contradiction has been solved by using multi-stroke mechanism. There may be different purposes to reduce the number of keys in a keyboard. Some of them intend to reduce the size of the keyboard while some others intend to increase the speed of typing. But all of these inventions use multi-stroke mechanism to generate more number of signals from less number of keys.