Thumbmanship

Hello there, Nakuru Scribes blog reader and also tech fan, before I proceed on our topic let me introduce myself: I am Mr. Koech; @Jullo_lio on Twitter, CEO, author and blogger on @JTechpreneur and also Founder and Director at NarcetHub.

Under Nakuru Scribes blog, I will still be concentrating on tech but from a different angle from how we do it on ‘the other side’ (my official blog, JTechpreneur).

Back to our day’s topic; Thumbmanship... 

I one time asked about it on my Facebook Page under #JTechpreneurFridayTrivia #TriviaDay.

Believe it or not that’s an art. Technology is connected to art, you have to agree with me that many desktop computers’, laptops’ and devices’ designs are artistic by just the look of it. The ergonomics involved are artistic in so many ways.

Thumbmanship is the art of typing on your phone using both thumbs. This art is mostly used when typing on smartphones, though it precedes the prevalence of the smartphone. Your thumbs have always been your link to technology from when the phone had buttons for a keyboard to now, when it just pops up on the screen whenever you want to type. 

To aid in thumbmanship Android, IOS plus other new UI (User Interface) designers have come up with features to aid in this art. Such as “Predictive Text", a feature that allows the phone to learn your contacts style/names and messaging style/words and gives you a list of predicted words which preempt a word you may need as you type in the first and second letter of the word. 

“Auto replace” or “Auto complete” is another feature that has been available on smartphones for long. Switching it on allows the phone to replace or complete the word you are typing with the most probable word when you tap the spacebar or a punctuation mark. For me, this feature is always off. Well, let us say we all have some memory of how “Auto complete” has messed us, or someone else, one time or another, by auto-replacing a word with another word making a message mean entirely different thing and is always to your parent, daughter or son, boss, spouse, girlfriend or boyfriend.

 Now, back then, the feature I loved most was when the on-screen keyboard could know which letter am typing when I touch the position of a letter. That was a welcome repose in Thumbmanship since it allowed guys like me, guys with bigger thumbs, easier sailing. Back then, I was using the Blackberry Curve which had QWERTY keyboard buttons, I loved it and preferred using it. That is until I lost it and had to get the better phone of that era. It was the era of the Huawei Ideos smartphone, the Ideos was a very small smartphone compared to the “smartphones of today” and thumbmanship for guys with bigger thumbs was a biggy. 

Heey, we can agree art is not for everyone but it can be learnt. I am saying this because of the old guys who, for one reason or another, can’t avoid using smartphones. There is a huge variety of Android and IOS apps which make our daily lives easier and cheaper, such as; WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype, Imo, WeChat and others.

These apps are in daily use, thus forcing an older person to have little choice but to use these apps so as to connect well, especially with family members. I know you, like me, know of an older person who types using his/her index finger, a letter at a time and sometimes, because of the condition of their eyes, they can be holding and looking at their phones from like 30cm away from their face. Oooor, well, maybe it’s you am talking about, no hard feelings (hehehe…), its okay to type like that, maybe you will learn, slowly. The bad news is for the person on the other side who sees “Typing…” for more than 20mins or more on the messaging app and then, finally, when the reply is received: it is a five words reply. 

With Tabs and Tablets thumbmanship is impossible, same to the now bigger smartphones especially to people with smaller hands - you have to deploy both thumbs. (Hahaha…karma is a ….) history is here repeating itself – but, the other way round. No worries, rechargeable Bluetooth keyboards are available.

Thanks to advancement, and Android being an open source operating system that's frequently modified by manufacturers many Keyboard apps are available on the Google Play Store and on the Apple App Store. For Apple iPad users a new feature was added to the iPad for undocking and splitting the keyboard, the split-apart thumb-typing setup. For Android users, SwiftKey has that feature. Thumbmanship lives on!

Screenshot credit: Mac Observer

Other more recent features on Android phones include “Handwriting Input” which gives the user an open surface for scribbling on the screen and then translates whatever you scribble into regular text. Coool, right? Here's a list of 7 top Android apps will awesome features that will interest you.

My advice is; embrace technology and you will learn. My Mum types with her right hand thumb, sometimes.
Until next time, Peace.
  

Related Post: Top 7 Android Keyboard Apps [Explained]