[mparkms]

This is pretty similar to the Japanese "flick" keyboard that's fairly commonly used on smartphones. Instead of 3 possible directions per button there's 5 (up, left, right, down, and neutral): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5UEsHEZWII

It's pretty intuitive because Japanese kana is a syllabary that's organized by their starting consonant and one of five possible vowels in the Gojuon system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goj%C5%ABon

I never got used to it but people who use it swear by it. Google even made a mechanical version for an April Fools a few years back: https://youtu.be/5LI1PysAlkU

[kristopolous]

I use it. It's great!

I'm native English but native Japanese are super fast. It's like watching a speed cuber

[soraminazuki]

It's 5 directions for Japanese kana, but 3 for the alphabet. Regarding usage, I find swipe input to be faster for English although flick input gives me more accuracy. In the end, nothing beats a physical keyboard though.