Feels like HTX blew up out of nowhere with a ton of long form content at once, but they were huge in Chinese social media already, and finally decided to start translating previous content to english and uploading to Youtube.
I'm assuming it's too heavy and has too much contact surface (so more friction), making it too hard to glide smoothly.
There's probably something with the position of the hand when you move the mouse as well. At least I seem to be moving mostly the wrist when I use my mouse, meaning that my hand and forearm are not always aligned; without this alignment, I feel there's more strain on the wrist when typing.
I saw the keyboard to be operated by the left hand only and here is my (totally personal and somewhoat adjacent) problem with it.
My left hand is the one which has suffered the most the many hours of using a keyboard over the last +-25 years. While the right hand has the occasional break from the keyboard when using the mouse, the left hand is constantly glued to the keyboard.
It also has a much tougher job - all the cmd, ctrl, alt and shift + combinations are mostly done using the left hand - e.g. on Mac you cannot cmd+shift+ select text with the arrows - you must use the left hand - so it ends up doing so much more work.
I wonder if there are other people with the same problem. My right hand never hurts after many hours of computer work - but the left hand does. It hurts even now that I am typing and I haven't even spent more than an hour doing it.
I'm at the point where I need to redefine cmd-z, x, c, v because my left thumb doesn't want to do that dance anymore. It's been painful for a year, and I finally got to the point of redefining it a couple weeks ago. And the muscle memory is so ingrained that I changed it to option ', 1, 2, 3 and never thought about the idea that my right hand could do it.
I was getting hand pain, switched to a Totem keyboard. 38 keys, 6 thumb keys. Column splay & never reaching for number row has greatly helped. 20g actuation means little force needed
Like people trying to find new interfaces for music making [thank god touchscreens!], there are people trying to figure out new hardware for interacting with computers. Thank you dudes!
PS: the first step towards feeling why such research is so important is when you start customizing productivity shortcuts on your existing keyboard. Then you understand that the input device in front of you can be more than a stupid typewriter. From there you start interrogating your interaction with machines. [and then you are addict, and you end up designing your own device :)]
Mistel Barocco fully split Keyboard: Can (and unfortunately must) be programmed without software.
Right half is the main keyboard. Left side connects to it, works also in standalone mode but is not programmable then.
https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/bd20945a731491407807e80d...
I was maintaining [1] which might be useful to you, but it's become outdated. It doesn't have a filter for one handed keyboards, but some of the "two halves" ones might be appropriate.
(If someone is interested in taking the site over and bringing it up to date, please open an issue.)
On OS X you can achieve this with Keyb, Karabiner Elements, etc. It's also easy to do with a programmable keyboard with ZMK/QMK. I've set up my Kinesis 360 Pro this way, being symmetrical means I can access every key easily. Hardware support for sticky keys also helps quite a bit.
Yes, having a special keyboard can be limiting in that it’s a pain to cart around to hook up to laptops, etc. and to get an extra in case it fails.
It still could be nice to have something optimized, though. If you ever design one, please share it, because I think you’d get more interest than you’d think.
I began to have interest in developing for everyone (primarily for differences for vision, though difference in hearing, memory, learning also) about 13 years ago, and got little support from the small company I worked for. We had a very color-specific interface, because we were space-limited. Then, wouldn’t you know it, our next manager was red-green colorblind, but it didn’t bother her.
I got jaded about it, learning that basically no one cared enough, and that people just get ignored and struggle with their adaptive devices. This still pisses me off, and I was once thinking heavily about applying a job where I could do something about it, but I don’t have the required background.
With AI, there’s beginning to be almost no excuse for someone not to add first-class support for all types of people into their interfaces and process, but people still continue to design like everyone is a twenty-something y.o. with full hearing, 20/15 full color vision, 130 IQ average, and no memory or learning differences or other modalities.
The mirror board is an interesting idea as it allows to start with a normal keyboard and one could then switch to a smaller board with the muscle memory trained. I would prefer a different switch key though. I use cap lock as a layer switch on my keyboards. But I will think about it and try out a few things.
It could already be useful in situation where I need to keep my hand over the mousepad.
From the submission title I expected some kind of chorded keyboard. This is just a tiny regular keyboard. What a bummer.
This reminds me how I once spend months trying to track down a Frogpad for a cyberpunk-inspired wearable computing project. I found one on eBay but got outbid at the last second. It still hurts a little.
Matias has a neat one-handed keyboard. It's quite expensive for what it is, especially considering these days where it's so easy to get a keyboard with remappable keys. There's a simulator on the sidebar at the link, and IMO it's quite intuitive.
I tried that concept whith my ergodox when i had an arm in a splint, but i couldnt quite get my brain to wrap around it. I could type on the right key, but not press the mirror/switch key at the right moment.
What would have made it easier is if it could infer the right key like an autocorrect
I'm trying to understand why this isn't a thing already. It seems there would be a market for it; when you consider all the different keyboards shapes and sizes...
Check out chorded keyboards. They've been a thing for a very long time. At least since early 00s or 90s when I saw them first. They are held one handed have 5 keys and you get different letters by chording multiple keys together.
first consumer device I ever saw was the Microwriter, back in the 1980's .. but court stenographers have been using chorded keyboards for a century or more
There's Maltron, Microwriter (who pretty much invented the contemporary chording ASCII computer keyboard) and its weird successors like Twiddler and Charachorder.
But the fundamental problem with one-handed keyboards is that as soon as you only have one hand, you step into specialisation.
People's hands and one-hand abilities are actually quite variable. People who have never had two hands have different hand agility to people who lose a hand in adulthood, for example.
Two-handed keyboards and two-handed typing masks so much of this variability, because you can be a fast and efficient typist even with your hands straying across the keyboard and using only two or three fingers on each hand (say, two on non-dominant hand, two and thumb on dominant).
One-handed keyboards, by contrast, need to be more optimised for individual one-handed typists when any economy of scale is already difficult to achieve.
I am kind of fascinated that some people move the world forward finding a solution even for supposedly dare conditions, while others kill innocent with bombs. This is what I've felt after watching the video.
Good luck to these manufacturers who serve the niche with such a passion. It needs a lion share of compassion to be able to design this kind of products for handicapped people.
About 20 years ago I wrote a little program to turn my own standard keyboard into something I could type on one hand with. It's basically just T9, with every basic letter key bound to two letters instead of one. (The mirror counterpart from the other side of the keyboard.)
It's a shit demo from college and I always wanted to share the concept but never made it presentable.
This already happened to me because of mouse usage. I’ve longed for a keyboard like this so I cam rest my right arm/hand which has significant damage and pain.
Their video on YouTube, in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vW12gQ4Klc
Okay I must say, the production quality of that video is insane.
Feels like HTX blew up out of nowhere with a ton of long form content at once, but they were huge in Chinese social media already, and finally decided to start translating previous content to english and uploading to Youtube.
I wonder what issues they ran into with using the entire keyboard as a mouse.
I'm assuming it's too heavy and has too much contact surface (so more friction), making it too hard to glide smoothly.
There's probably something with the position of the hand when you move the mouse as well. At least I seem to be moving mostly the wrist when I use my mouse, meaning that my hand and forearm are not always aligned; without this alignment, I feel there's more strain on the wrist when typing.
Same, looks like an amazing idea.
I saw the keyboard to be operated by the left hand only and here is my (totally personal and somewhoat adjacent) problem with it.
My left hand is the one which has suffered the most the many hours of using a keyboard over the last +-25 years. While the right hand has the occasional break from the keyboard when using the mouse, the left hand is constantly glued to the keyboard.
It also has a much tougher job - all the cmd, ctrl, alt and shift + combinations are mostly done using the left hand - e.g. on Mac you cannot cmd+shift+ select text with the arrows - you must use the left hand - so it ends up doing so much more work.
I wonder if there are other people with the same problem. My right hand never hurts after many hours of computer work - but the left hand does. It hurts even now that I am typing and I haven't even spent more than an hour doing it.
I'm at the point where I need to redefine cmd-z, x, c, v because my left thumb doesn't want to do that dance anymore. It's been painful for a year, and I finally got to the point of redefining it a couple weeks ago. And the muscle memory is so ingrained that I changed it to option ', 1, 2, 3 and never thought about the idea that my right hand could do it.
I was getting hand pain, switched to a Totem keyboard. 38 keys, 6 thumb keys. Column splay & never reaching for number row has greatly helped. 20g actuation means little force needed
You should remap ctrl/cmd (whatever feels better) to caps lock. It'll be much more convenient.
Check out make caps lock great again.
https://github.com/Vonng/Capslock
Like people trying to find new interfaces for music making [thank god touchscreens!], there are people trying to figure out new hardware for interacting with computers. Thank you dudes!
PS: the first step towards feeling why such research is so important is when you start customizing productivity shortcuts on your existing keyboard. Then you understand that the input device in front of you can be more than a stupid typewriter. From there you start interrogating your interaction with machines. [and then you are addict, and you end up designing your own device :)]
i believe that a crucial feature of good keyboards is that your wrist is stationary. this enables a better form of "muscle memory".
i've been using such a keyboard for two decades.
My personal search ended with the ZSA Moonlander.
Just leaving some links here because I had been researching this intensively before a planned shoulder surgery:
(Definitely adding this to my list)
Frogpad: German language one handed keyboard. Unfortunately discontinued http://frogpad.com/
Mirrorboard (my favorite): Intruiging mirror solution that builds upon the assumption that it is easier to access muscle memory from the other hand when you've learned it before https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...
Mistel Barocco fully split Keyboard: Can (and unfortunately must) be programmed without software. Right half is the main keyboard. Left side connects to it, works also in standalone mode but is not programmable then. https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/bd20945a731491407807e80d...
I was maintaining [1] which might be useful to you, but it's become outdated. It doesn't have a filter for one handed keyboards, but some of the "two halves" ones might be appropriate.
(If someone is interested in taking the site over and bringing it up to date, please open an issue.)
[1] https://aposymbiont.github.io/split-keyboards/
Some research on this topic http://edgarmatias.com/papers/hci96/
On OS X you can achieve this with Keyb, Karabiner Elements, etc. It's also easy to do with a programmable keyboard with ZMK/QMK. I've set up my Kinesis 360 Pro this way, being symmetrical means I can access every key easily. Hardware support for sticky keys also helps quite a bit.
Just being pedantic and off-topic here, but macOS hasn't been called OS X for nearly ten years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#macOS
Some of us still use OS X and haven't made the unnecessary switch to any of the macOS that followed it. :)
It'll always be OSX to me. Fight the branding!
I lost the use of my right hand in '06.
It's amazing how quickly you adapt. I have to put my mouse to the left of my keyboard and whereas before I was a touch typist, I now have to look.
And I can use a standard keyboard without undue hassle.
Yes, having a special keyboard can be limiting in that it’s a pain to cart around to hook up to laptops, etc. and to get an extra in case it fails.
It still could be nice to have something optimized, though. If you ever design one, please share it, because I think you’d get more interest than you’d think.
I began to have interest in developing for everyone (primarily for differences for vision, though difference in hearing, memory, learning also) about 13 years ago, and got little support from the small company I worked for. We had a very color-specific interface, because we were space-limited. Then, wouldn’t you know it, our next manager was red-green colorblind, but it didn’t bother her.
I got jaded about it, learning that basically no one cared enough, and that people just get ignored and struggle with their adaptive devices. This still pisses me off, and I was once thinking heavily about applying a job where I could do something about it, but I don’t have the required background.
With AI, there’s beginning to be almost no excuse for someone not to add first-class support for all types of people into their interfaces and process, but people still continue to design like everyone is a twenty-something y.o. with full hearing, 20/15 full color vision, 130 IQ average, and no memory or learning differences or other modalities.
The mirror board is an interesting idea as it allows to start with a normal keyboard and one could then switch to a smaller board with the muscle memory trained. I would prefer a different switch key though. I use cap lock as a layer switch on my keyboards. But I will think about it and try out a few things. It could already be useful in situation where I need to keep my hand over the mousepad.
Twiddler is an older design from the first wave of wearable computers, there are newer revisions that are still being sold afaik
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiddler
https://www.mytwiddler.com/
The frogpad is most likely the best one. So sad to see it’s been discontinued.
From the submission title I expected some kind of chorded keyboard. This is just a tiny regular keyboard. What a bummer.
This reminds me how I once spend months trying to track down a Frogpad for a cyberpunk-inspired wearable computing project. I found one on eBay but got outbid at the last second. It still hurts a little.
Matias has a neat one-handed keyboard. It's quite expensive for what it is, especially considering these days where it's so easy to get a keyboard with remappable keys. There's a simulator on the sidebar at the link, and IMO it's quite intuitive.
https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/
I tried that concept whith my ergodox when i had an arm in a splint, but i couldnt quite get my brain to wrap around it. I could type on the right key, but not press the mirror/switch key at the right moment.
What would have made it easier is if it could infer the right key like an autocorrect
Wow, 595 USD is insanely expensive for literally half a keyboard.
I thought this was a meme for cultured games.
Notice it's for left-handed use.
Someone linked to the video - they have produced a right-handed version.
I'm trying to understand why this isn't a thing already. It seems there would be a market for it; when you consider all the different keyboards shapes and sizes...
A UK company had produced them for decades, which probably serves most injured non-geek users.
https://www.maltron.com/store/p19/Maltron_Single_Hand_Keyboa...
That's actually quite a reasonable price for such a specialized device.
Check out chorded keyboards. They've been a thing for a very long time. At least since early 00s or 90s when I saw them first. They are held one handed have 5 keys and you get different letters by chording multiple keys together.
first consumer device I ever saw was the Microwriter, back in the 1980's .. but court stenographers have been using chorded keyboards for a century or more
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
Court stenography keyboards were not originally spelling out letters, though; they worked in shorthand symbols. I guess they can autoexpand that now.
Microwriter devices produced ASCII directly.
There's Maltron, Microwriter (who pretty much invented the contemporary chording ASCII computer keyboard) and its weird successors like Twiddler and Charachorder.
But the fundamental problem with one-handed keyboards is that as soon as you only have one hand, you step into specialisation.
People's hands and one-hand abilities are actually quite variable. People who have never had two hands have different hand agility to people who lose a hand in adulthood, for example.
Two-handed keyboards and two-handed typing masks so much of this variability, because you can be a fast and efficient typist even with your hands straying across the keyboard and using only two or three fingers on each hand (say, two on non-dominant hand, two and thumb on dominant).
One-handed keyboards, by contrast, need to be more optimised for individual one-handed typists when any economy of scale is already difficult to achieve.
You can just buy a split keyboard and put all the keys on layers on one side.
I am kind of fascinated that some people move the world forward finding a solution even for supposedly dare conditions, while others kill innocent with bombs. This is what I've felt after watching the video.
Good luck to these manufacturers who serve the niche with such a passion. It needs a lion share of compassion to be able to design this kind of products for handicapped people.
About 20 years ago I wrote a little program to turn my own standard keyboard into something I could type on one hand with. It's basically just T9, with every basic letter key bound to two letters instead of one. (The mirror counterpart from the other side of the keyboard.)
It's a shit demo from college and I always wanted to share the concept but never made it presentable.
https://github.com/cilphex/QuickBoard
It's in Mandarin
"Hi, would you like some RSI?"
"Yes, just the one thank you."
This already happened to me because of mouse usage. I’ve longed for a keyboard like this so I cam rest my right arm/hand which has significant damage and pain.
I am using this mouse because of that, and it works for me:
https://www.contourdesign.com/collection/contour-slidermouse
Iirc this keyboard was custom made for a user that only has one hand. A layered design would be better but harder for the average user to adapt to.