Thought I’d give the IKEA stuff a break for now and polish off a few ideas that I put on the back-burner.

I came up with this idea because I hate texting. It seems so archaic to me. You have to press one button 1-4 times (more if you missed and have to cycle back) to get a single letter input, and you also have to wait a few moments should you want to enter the same letter again (or a letter assigned to the same key). Why oh why indeed.

This takes the standard 12-key phone layout, but each button can now slide in as many as 4 directions to register a unique letter input. The button itself functions normally as a numerical input. This is similar to my Brain-Melting Double D-Pad controller I came up with a while back.

To prevent unintended numerical input, the button sinks as normal in the circular slot. But once pushed in any direction, there is no chance of accidentally pressing a number.

Once you slide the button to a letter, done. No multiple inputs. Using the same letter is as quick as slide-release-slide again.

My design (admittedly colorful) is a bit extreme in terms of the range of the button sliding, a necessary evil to demonstrate the functionality. A consumer model could be a lot more subtle in terms of the sliding input.

I also thought it would be ideal to make each button operate like a video game controller analog stick input. This way you could press for a number input, and then tilt to enter a letter. I may one day show this alternate concept.