To improve the interaction quality when entering characters into the stitch memory of the Bernina 145, I propose additional functionality for the existing “A” button. The sewing machine currently jumps to the “A” character when the “A” button is pressed. Nothing happens currently if the “A” button is pressed repeatedly.
I propose that pressing the “A” button will cycle among three commonly used “jump points” in the list of characters: “A”, “0″, and “_”. I believe this will accelerate text entry because it will allow the current character “cursor” to jump quickly in a list of 59 characters. (As an aside… I have to wonder why there are only 59 characters in the list. Why not one of the 2^n numbers?)
Tomorrow evening I will film my user interaction test using the software prototype I developed this evening. It would be very easy to get carried away with making a realistic mockup of the Bernina, but I did my best to stick to the bare
essentials.