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