A Practical Pressure Sensitive Computer Keyboard

by Paul H. Dietz, Benjamin Eidelson, Jonathan Westhues and Steven Bathiche

This UIST article is devoted to describing how to manufacture a cost effective pressure sensitive keyboard and some of its application advantages. A design is proposed that is very similar to the current way of manufacturing keyboards that due to a slight design change will allow the measure being used on a key. Some of the applications they discuss that can be used to help improve things such as gaming, instant messaging and typing. In gaming they point out that with their new design gamers will not run into a problem with ghosting, which is where a set of three or more keys are pressed that exist on the same row and same column which in turns hides the pressing of one of the keys. For instant messaging they suggest ways of configuring pressure sensitivity to control style and size as you type. For typing they discussed the ability to sense the amount of pressure that is applied in order to determine if a key was meant to be pressed or only touched while reaching for another key. One of the other major advantages of this type of keyboard is that it will only affect a users use of the keyboard if the correct software is setup to interpret their typing.

I found this paper very interesting and kind of surprising. As a gamer I can see the tremendous advantages to having a keyboard that can interpret how fast you want to run or how far you want to throw a grenade just by the amount of pressure applied to the keyboard. Some faults I find with this idea is that until the ability to use the readings from this keyboard are made available in the software such as instant messengers, games, and word processors the ability to capitalize on the advantages on this innovation will be very limited. I would say that the next step in this work should be the push for wide spread adoption in manufacturing of this keyboard and the program changes needed to make the most use from it in current applications.

TapSongs: Tapping Rhythm-Based Passwords on a Single Binary Sensor

by Jacob O. Wobbrock

The UIST about TapSongs describes a method by which users can login into devices that have limited input via a tap melody being correctly entered. This is accomplished by a user creating a TapSong based on a melody and entering it 5 to 15 times in order to form a reconizable pattern that is more specific to that user. However this was said not to be a requirement and one way mentioned was to have preset jingles/songs that a user selected for their TapSong and then over time the device would build a more taylored TapSong for that user. This method of logging in is reported to be reliable due to the diffuculty there is in evesdropping on a users TapSong and then being able to reporduce it in an attempt to login.

This paper is intersting because it is offerring a way to secure devices that don't have keyboard access or microphone for voice recognition. It is also very interesting because as it points out in the paper a user is not required to look at the device in order to enter the password while also keeping the inputs at only one. One are I could see this being used in is in intelligince where it is possible that a user may need a device that can handle multiple different things and yet can not contain anything extra for space. With this software a user could initiate different comands by merely tapping out the correct song/jingle for it. I would say one of the faults I see in this work is that those like me that can not keep a rythm to save their life will most likely always have issues with this software and those who are musicaly talented and can pick up a rythm just by watching will become very adept at logging into others devices.