Zacod adds 3D to QWERTY keyboard to reduce its size, but will it confuse the users?

Posted by ketyung on Fri, Jun 29th, 07 at 4:17 am

Zacod has got a pretty fancy idea of reducing the size of a full-QWERTY mobile keyboard without sacrifising any of the full set of funtionalities. Their concept is to add the third dimension to each key of the keyboard i.e turning each key into a little joystick. Instead of the usual QWERTY keyboard that we’re used to, the Zacod MK-100 keyboard concept is to present you a keyboard with 15 keys only, but still retaining the full QWERTY funtionalities.

So, with Zacod’s keyboard, each key that you press allows you to rotate on its axis to select up to 9 different characters. This concept will not apply only to physical keypads but also to the touchscreens. Zacod claims that their concept will allow a faster input than any other conventional QWERTY keyboards.

I’m definitely in doubt if this will speed up your input as we’ve been using full-size QWERTY keyboard for ages. With Zacod’s MK-100 keyboard, having to rotate on the axis to select the character sounds more error-prone to me. It will take at least couple of weeks or months for the users to get used to this very different method of inputing.