10 Inventions on Key Guides and Keyboard Templates
This is an incremental review of existing patents aimed at improving usability for computer users, with no new methods or data introduced.
The paper addresses the problem of users struggling to remember the multiple functions of keyboard keys across different software by reviewing 10 patented inventions for keyboard guides and templates, including static, dynamic, and onscreen display mechanisms.
A keyboard has many function keys and each function key can have multiple functions when used with control, shift and alt keys, it is difficult for a user to remember the functionality of the function keys. We need a mechanism to indicate the operations assigned to each function key for different software programs. A keyboard guide or template is used for this purpose. This article illustrates 10 inventions on keyboard key guide and function key templates selected from US patent database. Various mechanisms of keyboard templates have been proposed, including static, dynamic, manual, mechanical, onscreen display and others.