Home // International Journal On Advances in Intelligent Systems, volume 7, numbers 1 and 2, 2014 // View article

Single-Handed Eyes-Free Chord Typing: A Text-Entry Study

Authors:
Adrian Tarniceriu
Pierre Dillenbourg
Bixio Rimoldi

Keywords: chording keyboard, text entry, key mapping, feedback

Abstract:
For most users, interacting with mobile computing devices requires visual commitment to the input mechanism. As a result, devices such as smartphones and PDAs are not suitable in situations when visual attention is already focused on another task. Chording devices do not have this drawback but require some training. We evaluate the performance of a key-to-character mapping for a 5-key chording device designed to minimize the learning phase. The subjects in our study were able to memorize the mapping in the first 45 minutes of training. After approximately 350 minutes, the average entry speed was 20 words per minute. The influence of having visual, audio or no feedback was also evaluated. We found that the typing rates were the same under all three conditions, but the error rates were the smallest in the absence of feedback (2.32%) and the largest when the users could see what they typed (3.41%).

Pages: 145 to 155

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2014. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2014

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2679