Computer Engineering Commons^™

Using Triz To Design The Future Keyboard, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A keyboard is the most common and widely used input device for a computer. Using the keyboard is often vital to interact with a computer. There are several aspects of a keyboard such as size, key layout, convenience and ergonomic features etc., which are continuously under improvement by keyboard designers and manufacturers. TRIZ is an efficient methodology in product designing. Using IFR and Trends we can well predict the directions of the future keyboards and using Contradictions and Principles we can overcome the current limitations. This article analyses the critical features of a keyboard, does a functional analysis, derives the …

Keyboards For Inputting Japanese Language: A Study Based On Us Patents, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The most commonly used Japanese alphabets are Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. The Kanji alphabet includes pictographs or ideographic characters that were adopted from the Chinese alphabet. Hiragana is used to spell words of Japanese origin, while Katakana is used to spell words of western or other foreign origin.

Two methods are commonly used to input Japanese to the computer. One, the “kana input method” that uses a keyboard having 46 Japanese iroha (or kana) letter keys. The other method is “Roma-ji input method”, where the Japanese letters are composed of English input from a standard QWERTY keyboard. Both the methods …

10 Inventions On Reducing Keyboard Size, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A conventional computer keyboard consists of as many as 101 keys. The keyboard has several sections, such as text entry section, navigation section, and numeric keypad etc. and each having several keys on the keyboard. The size of the keyboard is a major inconvenience for portable computers, as they cannot be carried easily. Thus there are certain circumstances which compels to reduce the size of a keyboard. Reducing the size of a keyboard leads to several problems. A reduced size keyboard may not contain all the keys available on a full size keyboard; a reduced size keyboard may not be …

10 Inventions On Keyboard Attachments: A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although the primary objective of the keyboard to input data into the computer, the advanced keyboards keep various other things in mind, such as, how to use the same keyboard for various other purposes, or how to use the same keyboard efficiently by using various other attachments to the keyboard. This objective led to various inventions on keyboard attachments, some of which are illustrated below in this article. This article illustrates 10 inventions on various keyboard attachments from US patent database. Each different attachment improves the usability of the keyboard in some way or other. Some attachments illustrated are template …