Text Entry Tap Accuracy and Exploration of Tilt Controlled Layered Interaction on Smartwatches

Abstract:

Design of text entry on small screen devices, e.g. smartwatches, faces three related challenges: trading off a reasonably sized keyboard area against space to display the entered text, the concern over "fat fingers" and providing high quality dictionary driven text on a small device. This work investigates tap accuracy and revisits layered interfaces to explore a novel layered text entry method for smartwatches. A two part user study identified the preferred typing and reading tilt angles and then investigated variants of a tilting layered keyboard against a standard layout. We show good typing speed (29 wpm) when text entry prediction is working well and very high accuracy on the standard layout – contradicting fears of fat-fingers limiting watch text-entry. User feedback is positive towards tilting interaction and we identify ~14° tilt as a comfortable typing angle. However, layering resulted in slightly slower and more erroneous entry. 

Biography:

Dr. Mark Dunlop's research focuses on improving the usability of mobile systems through new interaction techniques - in particular looking at how to quickly and accurately enter text on small devices, how to display complex information on small screens and how to exploit sensors and historical context information on mobiles. His research is typically user centred with considerable focus on user studies and an underlying approach that the personal and situation aware nature of the devices must be exploited in to focus on what individual users wants at this location/time. Recent research projects involve improving touchscreen text entry for older adults, prediction & visualisation of tourist activity in Glasgow based on advanced flight searches and crowdsourcing of dangerous road sections with advanced driver warning. Dr Dunlop is currently a subcommittee co-chair for ACM CHI and is a member of the international steering committee for MobileHCI ha ving have been involved with the conference since the first one in Glasgow in 1998. He is also an associate editor for The Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction and has acted as an expert witness on mobile usability patents.