5:16am June 20, 2013

I love the Swype keyboard for Android

I’m not sure how it works with other people’s motor skills. Of course, for anyone who can’t do it, it also fur rnctions equally as a standard keyboard.

But for me it feels like a way I can get a kinesthetic view of the words in a way I otherwise never can. Sure, touch typing is kinesthetic. But it’s not a one finger smooth dance around the keyboard. This helps my RSI too. And I’m learning all these interesting keyboard shortcuts.

Basically you let your finger glide from letter to letter. Sometimes you have to teach it words. It learns from your usage a lot too.

But that’s just the beginning. You can do this so many ways. You can make your movements swirly or jagged, and take a lot of routes to the same location. It feels like getting to know the letters in an intimate way. Most words can be many different shapes. And which ones you choose may never be seen by anyone else, but it adds to the experience of typing. It feels like art at a time when I’m too sick to pull off most art. Where it’s not so much the creation as the act of creating. I never knew typing could bee so enjoyable. And my arm was falling asleep from RSI when I got this. Note it’s not anymore. These are smooth movements that don’t put the same strain on you as repeated tapping. In fact now it’s my other arm falling asleep from holding the phone still.

I have never believed the claim that any keyboard could make typing fun. But this goes beyond that. It makes it an entire experience different from normal typing yet fairly intuitive if you know you’re way around a keyboard. An as someone who normally paints in a kinesthetic-driven way, this greatly mirrors my experience of painting. It gives me a connection to the words that is ha hard to find in someone who isn’t very innately verbal but is very kinesthetic.

Here’s a link to the website:

http://www.Swype.com/

For Android it can be found in the Google play store.