8pen keyboard for Android will not take off
filed in Ecosystem Android, User Experience on Nov.02, 2010
We have introduced BlindType, which I think is great and Swype which is also good. Now we have a whole new keyboard experience in 8pen.
8pen uses a lot of gesture based actions for input but what matters more is the way the letters are arranged. They are not QWERTY style. Why do I think it will not work?
1. Simply too much learning curve
Learning curve is steep. Most of us grew up learning to type on QWERTY which on a whole is not efficient, but after years of practice it has become second nature to us. While 8pen might ultimately be more efficient as a input method after 1 year of practice, most people are unwilling to learn this input mechanism.
2. Not standard from other devices input.
Imagine this, you take an effort to learn this method. Then when you go to your netbook or desktop and you need to input, it will likely impede the way you input on those device as your brain has to process 2 different sets of input for the same thing. I am not sure how big is the impact but we were able to do that quite well with the QWERTY keyboard and the T9 alphanumeric keypad.
