HCI Issues

[coderanger]

Why is it that the two most common computer input input devices, the keyboard and mouse, are probably the least effcient? I've been working with trying to integrate a card reader into the Helpdesk's workflow, and its proving difficult to program for, as everything in the world of GUI development assumes you are using a keyboard for all text input.

Comments

[webwormx]

Just beep at them like Windows does if they're typing too fast.

Actually I'm still kind of confused by what you mean. What alternate input devices are you proposing?

[coderanger]

All the mag-stripe card readers I could find show up as USB HID devices (i.e. a keyboard). When you swipe a card it looks to the OS as if you had just typed in all the data in the stripe. Windows doesn't have any way to split out the input streams, so I have to do funny magic to figure out if a given key press/sequence was from a card swipe or an actual operator at the real keyboard. In general though I prefer 0-order haptic interfaces (read: touchscreen) as in a high-volume workflow they are a lot easier to modify and integrate with new systems. The problem is that a large installation of these kinds of systems is too expensive, so using a smaller, gesture-based haptic interface is probably going to be a better long-term solution. For data entry I am looking at moving this system to a passive RFID reader once I get things working better.