Métamorphe

Abstract

Hotkeys are an efficient method of selecting commands on a keyboard. However, these shortcuts are often underused by users. We present Métamorphe, a novel keyboard with keys that can be individually raised and lowered to promote hotkeys usage. Métamorphe augments the output of traditional keyboards with haptic and visual feedback, and offers a novel design space for user input on raised keys (e.g., gestures such as squeezing or pushing the sides of a key). We detail the implementation of Métamorphe and discuss design factors. We also report two user studies. The first is a user-defined interface study that shows that the new input vocabulary is usable and useful, and provides insights into the mental models that users associate with raised keys. The second user study shows improved eyesfree selection performance for raised keys as well as the surrounding unraised keys.

Emergeables

“…In this work we are interested in displays that are able to deform to create and present these controls dynamically. Producing controls on-demand has previously been proven beneficial for static buttons [2,14]. However, there is a significant gap around tangibility of continuous controls that we aim to address here.…”

ExpanDial

“…It allows users to grasp the dial even from the side, although it was less popular in the grasp study. 2 https://palettegear.com/ Finally, users can also freely increase/decrease the number of fingers when changing the dial width. The paper pieces offer a shape close to a cylinder.…”

“…Shape-changing interfaces are more and more widespread within the HCI community and many papers have already highlighted the advantages of bringing reconfigurability to interactive devices [1] [29] [33]. More particularly there is a growing trend in transforming standard input devices into reconfigurable ones to attribute them additional functionalities: e.g., dials and sliders [20][29] [40], buttons [41] mouse and keyboard [21] [2] and desktop [3].…”

MarkPad

“…Another solution would be to use dynamic tactile marks that are activated after the user initiates a gesture from the borders, using technologies providing tactile feedback in real time [1,8,12]. Such technology has for instance been used in Métamorphe [6] to promote hotkey usage.…”