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- The "Wild Ride" phenomenon
- How many steps in the throttle?
- Instead of stopping the magnet if a different direction key is pressed, what if the magnet continued moving in the new direction at the same speed?
- What would it be like to have two modes for keyboard interaction: standard cursor control style of interaction, and this "throttle" control scheme?
Evolving Design Idea
Idea is to have a control scheme inspired by 80's video games like Snake and Asteroids.
Controlling Movement and Direction:
- Movement and speed is controlled by the direction keys.
- Once a direction key is pressed, it will continue to move on its own in that direction.
- Direction can be changed at any time by pressing any of the other direction keys
- Changing directions does not change its speed - it continues at the speed it was traveling at.
Controlling Speed:
- Speed is controlled by dedicated keys like CTRL and ALT to increase and decrease, or 1 - 2 - 3 to change speeds to slow, moderate, and fast.
- Stop is controlled by space bar (or some other key)
Unlike the v2.0 sketch above, this evolving design idea uses the direction keys to control just the direction - making it simpler to understand and control. Speed is mapped to another set of keys making it easier to just focus on movement once you have a speed you like.
V1.0
Image 1 Above: Initial view
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