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Dedication, tinkering persistence, passion & strong vision to make horseless carriage a reality. "Car for the people". "Assembly manufacturing concept". Years of consistent dedicated act, tinkering and passion. One of the greatest, finest and bravest tinkerer of all time. Modern mobile society as the result.
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The greatest people manager and most charismatic people-centric business leader of all time. Think. Respect to individual. People first. Under his great leadership turns the tiny IBM into a mighty organization of its time. The "king" in the annal of "business kingdom". A rare business person with great business persona and legendary people-centric attitude of our time.
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While people around the world getting excited with 'touch-based interface" and touch-based screen design, for some reason I still feel -- and sincerely believe -- that it is neither a "100% touch-screen interface only" nor a "100% thumb-typing keyboard interface only" that would produce the best, most effective, easiest, most convenient, and most effective user experience of all.
Touch screen is great for easy, quick and convenient navigation. Yet at the same time, it is still less reliable, less accurate, and still relatively 'lauzy' in handling text inputing that we all need to do when we type emails, send SMS or chat.
At the same time, thumb-type keyboard interface, while it gives us convenient, fast and accurate typing, it is increasingly felt slow, lauzy, ineffective and cumbersome in help us browsing, clicking, pointing and navigating big sized information in our limited size screen device.
As such, perhaps a combination of "effective thumb-typing interface" + "modern touch-scrolling/pointing interface" is needed. Such combine the accuracy of the "physical thumb-type keyboard" with the convenience, fast-ness and responsive-ness of the "touch-scolling/touch-pointing" interface.
While Palm Pre seems to be excitingly heading in such direction, its "dual layer keyboard + touch" implementation to make such happen perhaps -- in the subsequent version -- will need to be refined even further.
Decision to "make the physical keyboard appear when the user flips the screen up" seems and "make the physical keyboard disappear when the user flips the screen down" seems to be 'simple, practical and easy to do' during demo and presentation session. But in the long term, once real user use the device daily, the act of having to do such "flip back and forth action" again and again might potentially (and incrasingly) become annoying, tiring and ineffective act to do. Either people would eventually get tired doing that an keep their "smartphone keyboard open", or they would eventually "grumbled" each time they have to do it again and again and again to enable them to interact with their information quickly, effectively and conveniently.
As a solution to that, perhaps, a more "balanced -- yet also a the same time a bit compromised -- design" needed. Rather than sticking to 100% thumb-typing interface dogma (aka the "Blackberry Bold" approach), or sticking to 100% touch based interface dogma (aka the "iPhone" approach), or sticking to the dual layer keyboard+touch approach (aka the "Palm Pre" approach), probably a combined and more 'balanced' touch + type interface approach required. Through such approach, I envision a very easy to use, effective and productive device, whereby people could be benefited from the combined power of keyboard+touch interface, in the most effective manner, rather than people act and interaction being made 'cumbersome' by inherent weakness of one type of interface only.
Above picture is my kind of 'rough idea' of the kind of effective touch+type interface of the future that probably would become increasingly very popular in the future. It combines the power of both "thumb-type + touch" interface in a design structure that makes touching and typing extremely fast effective and intuitive. Through such "design", no continuous flip up & flip down act is required to make people able to access the physical keyboard. At the same time -- as the screen size become smaller (because the physical keyboard occupies some of the screen area) -- the touch interface make it quick, easy and convenient for user and people to point, click, scroll and navigate around -- in smaller screen size window.
Such combo produces the most effective interface ever -- at least until one day, software-keyboard really proven to be effectively comfortable, accurate and convenient -- the way physical keyboard does today.
Years of history of handphone design shows that while "flip keyboard phone" or "scroll keyboard phone" was always initially popular and considered "state of the art" approach in modern phone design, in the long term -- as people use their phone more and more for typing, texting and navigating information -- the simpler, more conservative (yet practical) candy bar model is becoming the most popular. People and manufacturer increasingly see that the simpler approach taken by the "candy bar" model makes typing and accessing the keyboard fast, effective, convenient and easy, as it required less step to do so. For example, as the phone ring, just click on the button to answer the phone, to type SMS message just type -- as the keyboard is always there, compared to the "more laborious steps and effort required" in doing so with a "flip keyboard phone" or a "scroll keyboard phone".
Perhaps such trend would happen again with smartphone devices in the future. While today people and manufacturer seem to be rushing for a 100% touch based interface, not until the soft-keyboard really become extremely convenient and accurate, perhaps a physical keyboard would eventually still be required. In such case and condition, the 'best' and 'most effective' touch+type interface of all, probably would be in the form of a 'candy bar' like touch+type approach, rather than a 'dual layer' touch+type one.
We'll see how the future goes.
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