10 Inventions on improving keyboard efficiency: A TRIZ based analysis
This work provides a systematic review of incremental innovations in keyboard design, potentially benefiting designers and engineers in the human-computer interaction domain.
The paper analyzes 10 inventions from the US Patent database aimed at improving keyboard efficiency, such as adding toolbar buttons, power saving methods, and cooling mechanisms, using TRIZ methodology to examine their design principles and contradictions.
A keyboard is the most important input device for a computer. With the development of technology a basic keyboard does not want to remain confined within the basic functionalities of a keyboard, rather it wants to go beyond. There are several inventions which attempt to improve the efficiency of a conventional keyboard. This article illustrates 10 inventions from US Patent database all of which have proposed very interesting methods for improving the efficiency of a computer keyboard. Some interesting inventions include, adding toolbar buttons on the keyboard, power saving method, keyboard-cooling mechanism, robust keyboard for public use, keyboard enhancement for children`s use. Each of these inventions have been analyzed from TRIZ perspective, in many cases formulating the Ideal Final Result, contradictions and highlighting the Inventive Principles used in the solution.