research-article

SwipeKey: a swipe-based keyboard design for smartwatches

Authors:

Masatoshi Chang-Ogimoto,

Reinhard Pointner,

Mike ChenAuthors Info & Claims

MobileHCI '16: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

Pages 60 - 71

https://doi.org/10.1145/2935334.2935336

Published: 06 September 2016 Publication History

Abstract

The rise of smartwatches calls for efficient, convenient and suitable text input methods for these small computers. The minuscule size of these screens brings many challenges on how to interact with these devices. Keyboard design requires optimization for these small screens to provide a good user experience and fast text entry method on these devices. We introduce SwipeKey, a text input method that uses swipe directions to allow multiple inputs per button and thus allows for an increase in the effective size of input buttons. We have conducted thorough experiments optimizing SwipeKey to create a fast, low-error, and easy to learn soft keyboard for smartwatches. These benefits result from having a keyboard that emphasizes the use of swipe motions. Our user study results show that with a specific combination of swipe directions and corresponding button size, SwipeKey users achieved a speed of 11 in words per minute (WPM), a 53% improvement from baseline (7.2 in WPM) and dramatically decreased character error rate (CER) from the baseline of 10% down to 3.4%.

References

[1]

Johnny Accot and Shumin Zhai. 2002. More than dotting the i's---foundations for crossing-based interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 73--80.

Digital Library

[2]

Christoph Amma, Dirk Gehrig, and Tanja Schultz. 2010. Airwriting Recognition Using Wearable Motion Sensors. In Proceedings of the 1st Augmented Human International Conference (AH '10). Article 10, 8 pages.

Digital Library

[3]

Stuart K. Card, Thomas P. Moran, and Allen Newell. 1980. The keystroke-level model for user performance time with interactive systems. Commun. ACM 23, 7 (1980), 396--410.

Digital Library

[4]

Xiang 'Anthony' Chen, Tovi Grossman, and George Fitzmaurice. 2014. Swipeboard: A Text Entry Technique for Ultra-small Interfaces That Supports Novice to Expert Transitions. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '14). 615--620.

Digital Library

[5]

Exideas. 2015. MessageEase. (2015). Official Site https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php.

[6]

FlickKey. 2010--2014. FlickKey Keyboard. (2010-2014). Official Site http://www.flickkey.com.

[7]

Markus Funk, Alireza Sahami, Niels Henze, and Albrecht Schmidt. 2014. Using a Touch-sensitive Wristband for Text Entry on Smart Watches. In CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '14). 2305--2310.

Digital Library

[8]

Mikael Goldstein, Robert Book, Gunilla Alsiö, and Silvia Tessa. 1999. Non-keyboard QWERTY touch typing: a portable input interface for the mobile user. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 32--39.

Digital Library

[9]

Nathan Green, Jan Kruger, Chirag Faldu, and Robert St Amant. 2004. A reduced QWERTY keyboard for mobile text entry. In CHI'04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 1429--1432.

Digital Library

[10]

Jonggi Hong, Seongkook Heo, Poika Isokoski, and Geehyuk Lee. 2015. SplitBoard: A Simple Split Soft Keyboard for Wristwatch-sized Touch Screens. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). 1233--1236.

Digital Library

[11]

Christina L. James and Kelly M. Reischel. 2001. Text Input for Mobile Devices: Comparing Model Prediction to Actual Performance. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '01). 365--371.

Digital Library

[12]

Jiepu Jiang, Wei Jeng, and Daqing He. 2013. How do users respond to voice input errors?: lexical and phonetic query reformulation in voice search. In Proceedings of the 36th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval. ACM, 143--152.

Digital Library

[13]

Jeong Ho Kim, Lovenoor Aulck, Ornwipa Thamsuwan, Michael C. Bartha, and Peter W. Johnson. 2014. The effect of key size of touch screen virtual keyboards on productivity, usability, and typing biomechanics. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 56, 7 (2014), 1235--1248.

[14]

Andreas Komninos and Mark Dunlop. 2014. Text input on a smart watch. Pervasive Computing, IEEE 13, 4 (2014), 50--58.

[15]

Per-Ola Kristensson and Shumin Zhai. 2004. SHARK 2: a large vocabulary shorthand writing system for pen-based computers. In Proceedings of the 17th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology. ACM, 43--52.

Digital Library

[16]

Seungyon Lee and Shumin Zhai. 2009. The Performance of Touch Screen Soft Buttons. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09). 309--318.

Digital Library

[17]

Luis A. Leiva, Alireza Sahami, Alejandro Catala, Niels Henze, and Albrecht Schmidt. 2015. Text Entry on Tiny QWERTY Soft Keyboards. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). 669--678.

Digital Library

[18]

Frank Chun Yat Li, Richard T. Guy, Koji Yatani, and Khai N. Truong. 2011. The 1Line Keyboard: A QWERTY Layout in a Single Line. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '11). 461--470.

Digital Library

[19]

Kent Lyons, Thad Starner, Daniel Plaisted, James Fusia, Amanda Lyons, Aaron Drew, and E. W. Looney. 2004. Twiddler Typing: One-handed Chording Text Entry for Mobile Phones. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '04). 671--678.

Digital Library

[20]

I. Scott MacKenzie and R. William Soukoreff. 2002. Text Entry for Mobile Computing: Models and Methods, Theory and Practice. HumanComputer Interaction 17, 2-3 (2002), 147--198.

[21]

I. Scott MacKenzie and R. William Soukoreff. 2003. Phrase Sets for Evaluating Text Entry Techniques. In CHI '03 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '03). 754--755.

Digital Library

[22]

I. Scott MacKenzie and Shawn X. Zhang. 1999. The Design and Evaluation of a High-performance Soft Keyboard. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '99). 25--31.

Digital Library

[23]

Anders Markussen, Mikkel Rønne Jakobsen, and Kasper Hornbæk. Vulture: A Mid-air Word-gesture Keyboard.

[24]

Microsoft. 2016. Microsoft Band. (2016). Official Site https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/.

[25]

Donald A. Norman and Diane Fisher. 1982. Why alphabetic keyboards are not easy to use: Keyboard layout doesn't much matter. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 24, 5 (1982), 509--519.

[26]

Nuance. 2016. T9. (2016). http://www.nuance.com/for-business/by-product/t9/index.htm

[27]

Stephen Oney, Chris Harrison, Amy Ogan, and Jason Wiese. 2013. ZoomBoard: A Diminutive Qwerty Soft Keyboard Using Iterative Zooming for Ultra-small Devices. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). 2799--2802.

Digital Library

[28]

Pekka Parhi, Amy K. Karlson, and Benjamin B. Bederson. 2006. Target Size Study for One-handed Thumb Use on Small Touchscreen Devices. In Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Human-computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '06). 203--210.

Digital Library

[29]

Kurt Partridge, Saurav Chatterjee, Vibha Sazawal, Gaetano Borriello, and Roy Want. 2002. TiltType: Accelerometer-supported Text Entry for Very Small Devices. In Proceedings of the 15th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '02). 201--204.

Digital Library

[30]

Rjean Plamondon and Adel M. Alimi. 1997. Speed/accuracy trade-offs in target-directed movements. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (6 1997), 279--303. Issue 02.

[31]

S. Primorac and M. Russo. 2012. Android application for sending SMS messages with speech recognition interface. In MIPRO, 2012 Proceedings of the 35th International Convention. 1763--1767.

[32]

Reza Rawassizadeh, Blaine A. Price, and Marian Petre. 2015. Wearables: Has the age of smartwatches finally arrived? Commun. ACM 58, 1 (2015), 45--47.

Digital Library

[33]

Marco Romano, Luca Paolino, Genoveffa Tortora, and Giuliana Vitiello. 2014. The tap and slide keyboard: A new interaction method for mobile device text entry. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 30, 12 (2014), 935--945.

[34]

Andrew Sears, Doreen Revis, Janet Swatski, Rob Crittenden, and Ben Shneiderman. 1993. Investigating touchscreen typing: the effect of keyboard size on typing speed. Behaviour & Information Technology 12, 1 (1993), 17--22.

[35]

Harold Thimbleby. 2001. Affordance and Symmetry. In Interactive Systems: Design, Specification, and Verification, Chris Johnson (Ed.). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2220. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 199--217.

Digital Library

[36]

Harold Thimbleby. 2002. Symmetry for Successful Interactive Systems. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI-NZ Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction (CHINZ '02). 1--9.

Digital Library

[37]

Keith Vertanen and Per Ola Kristensson. 2009. Parakeet: A Continuous Speech Recognition System for Mobile Touch-screen Devices. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '09). 237--246.

Digital Library

[38]

Keith Vertanen, Haythem Memmi, Justin Emge, Shyam Reyal, and Per Ola Kristensson. 2015. VelociTap: Investigating Fast Mobile Text Entry using Sentence-Based Decoding of Touchscreen Keyboard Input. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 659--668.

Digital Library

[39]

Shumin Zhai, Jing Kong, and Xiangshi Ren. 2004. Speed--accuracy tradeoff in Fitts law taskson the equivalency of actual and nominal pointing precision. International journal of human-computer studies 61, 6 (2004), 823--856.

Digital Library

[40]

Shumin Zhai and Per Ola Kristensson. 2012. The word-gesture keyboard: reimagining keyboard interaction. Commun. ACM 55, 9 (2012), 91--101.

Digital Library

[41]

Shumin Zhai, Per Ola Kristensson, Pengjun Gong, Michael Greiner, Shilei Allen Peng, Liang Mico Liu, and Anthony Dunnigan. 2009. Shapewriter on the iphone: from the laboratory to the real world. In CHI'09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2667--2670.

Digital Library

Cited By

Wan TZhang LYang HIrani PYu LLiang H(2024)Exploration of Foot-based Text Entry Techniques for Virtual Reality EnvironmentsProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642757(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642757
Kern FNiebling FLatoschik M(2023)Text Input for Non-Stationary XR Workspaces: Investigating Tap and Word-Gesture Keyboards in Virtual and Augmented RealityIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.324709829:5(2658-2669)Online publication date: 1-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3247098
Iwasaki MHara SAbe M(2023)Speech Synthesis Using Ambiguous Inputs From Wearable Keyboards2023 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC)10.1109/APSIPAASC58517.2023.10317228(1172-1178)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/APSIPAASC58517.2023.10317228
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

SwipeKey: a swipe-based keyboard design for smartwatches
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction devices
      1. Touch screens
    2. Interaction paradigms
      1. Graphical user interfaces

Recommendations

COMPASS: Rotational Keyboard on Non-Touch Smartwatches
CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Entering text is very challenging on smartwatches, especially on non-touch smartwatches where virtual keyboards are unavailable. In this paper, we designed and implemented COMPASS, a non-touch bezel-based text entry technique. COMPASS positions multiple ...
FingerT9: Leveraging Thumb-to-finger Interaction for Same-side-hand Text Entry on Smartwatches
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We introduce FingerT9, leveraging the action of thumb-to-finger touching on the finger segments, to support same-side-hand (SSH) text entry on smartwatches. This is achieved by mapping a T9 keyboard layout to the finger segments. Our solution avoids the ...
SplitBoard: A Simple Split Soft Keyboard for Wristwatch-sized Touch Screens
CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Text entry on a smartwatch is a challenging problem due to the device's limited screen area. In this paper, we introduce the SplitBoard, which is a soft keyboard designed for a smartwatch. As the user flicks left or right on the keyboard, it switches ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

MobileHCI '16: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

September 2016

567 pages

ISBN:9781450344081

DOI:10.1145/2935334

General Chairs:
Fabio Paternò
CNR-ISTI, Italy
,
Kaisa Väänänen
Tampere University of Technology, Finland
,
Program Chairs:
Karen Church
Intercom, USA
,
Jonna Häkkilä
University of Lapland, Finland
,
Antonio Krüger
DFKI, Germany
,
Marcos Serrano
University of Toulouse, France

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 06 September 2016

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

MobileHCI '16

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

MobileHCI '16: 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

September 6 - 9, 2016

Florence, Italy

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 202 of 906 submissions, 22%

Upcoming Conference

MobileHCI '24

Sponsor:
sigchi

26th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction

September 30 - October 3, 2024

Melbourne , VIC , Australia

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

18
Total Citations
View Citations
726
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)55
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 01 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Wan TZhang LYang HIrani PYu LLiang H(2024)Exploration of Foot-based Text Entry Techniques for Virtual Reality EnvironmentsProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642757(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642757
Kern FNiebling FLatoschik M(2023)Text Input for Non-Stationary XR Workspaces: Investigating Tap and Word-Gesture Keyboards in Virtual and Augmented RealityIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.324709829:5(2658-2669)Online publication date: 1-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3247098
Iwasaki MHara SAbe M(2023)Speech Synthesis Using Ambiguous Inputs From Wearable Keyboards2023 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC)10.1109/APSIPAASC58517.2023.10317228(1172-1178)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/APSIPAASC58517.2023.10317228
Wei HLi ZGalvan ASu ZZhang XPahlavan KSolovey E(2022)IndexPenProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/35346016:2(1-39)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3534601
Jang RJung CMohaisen DLee KNyang D(2022)A One-Page Text Entry Method Optimized for Rectangle SmartwatchesIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2021.305722621:10(3443-3454)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2021.3057226
Luna MNascimento HQuigley ASoares F(2022)Text entry for the Blind on SmartwatchesUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-022-00870-222:3(737-755)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-022-00870-2
Vertanen K(2021)Probabilistic Text Entry—Case Study 3Intelligent Computing for Interactive System Design10.1145/3447404.3447420(277-320)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3447404.3447420
Mäkelä VKleine JHood MAlt FSchmidt AKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)Hidden Interaction Techniques: Concealed Information Acquisition and Texting on Smartphones and WearablesProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445504(1-14)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445504
Sharif MRakhmetulla GArif AJorge JFerreira AMarquardt NChevalier F(2020)TapStr: A Tap and Stroke Reduced-Qwerty for SmartphonesCompanion Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces10.1145/3380867.3426208(47-50)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3380867.3426208
Xu ZChen WZhao DLuo JWu TGong JYin SZhai JYang XBernhaupt RMueller FVerweij DAndres JMcGrenere JCockburn AAvellino IGoguey ABjørn PZhao SSamson BKocielnik R(2020)BiTipText: Bimanual Eyes-Free Text Entry on a Fingertip KeyboardProceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3313831.3376306(1-13)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3313831.3376306
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents