Five-key text input using rhythmic mappings

ABSTRACT

Novel key mappings, including chording, character prediction, and multi-tap, allow the use of fewer keys than those on a conventional keyboard to enter text. In this paper, we explore a text input method that makes use of rhythmic mappings of five keys. The keying technique averages 1.5 keystrokes per character for typical English text. In initial testing, the technique shows performance similar to chording and other multi-tap techniques, and our subjects had few problems with basic text entry. Five-key entry techniques may have benefits for text entry in multi-point touch devices, as they eliminate targeting by providing a unique mapping for each finger.

REFERENCES

• 1: R. Arunachalam, V. S. Weerasinghe, and K. R. Mills. Motor control of rapid sequential finger tapping in humans. J. Neurophysiol., 94: 2162--2170, 2005.
• 2: Stuart K. Card , Allen Newell , Thomas P. Moran, The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 1983
• 3: Masaaki Fukumoto , Yoshinobu Tonomura, “Body coupled FingerRing”: wireless wearable keyboard, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.147-154, March 22-27, 1997, Atlanta, Georgia, United States [doi>10.1145/258549.258636]
• 4: S. C. Lee, M. W. Newman, and K. E. Partridge. Paradiddle: An exploration of a one-handed tap--based text entry technique. In PERMID 2007: Proc. Pervasive Mobile Interaction Devices Workshop, part of PERVASIVE 2007: 5th Int. Conf. on Pervasive Computing, 2007.
• 5: Kent Lyons , Thad Starner , Daniel Plaisted , James Fusia , Amanda Lyons , Aaron Drew , E. W. Looney, Twiddler typing: one-handed chording text entry for mobile phones, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.671-678, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985692.985777]
• 6: I. Scott MacKenzie, KSPC (Keystrokes per Character) as a Characteristic of Text Entry Techniques, Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction, p.195-210, September 18-20, 2002
• 7: I. S. MacKenzie and R. W. Soukoreff. Text entry for mobile computing: Models and methods, theory and practice. Hum.-Comput. Interact., 17:147--198, 2002.
• 8: I. Scott MacKenzie , R. William Soukoreff, Phrase sets for evaluating text entry techniques, CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/765891.765971]
• 9: D. R. Ridley and M. B. Lively. English letter frequencies and their applications: Part II--digraph frequencies. Psychol. Rep., 95:787--794, 2004.
• 10: E. Todorov and M. I. Jordan. Optimal feedback control as a theory of motor coordination. Nature Neuroscience, 5:1226--1235, 2002.
• 11: A. H. D. Watson. What can studying musicians tell us about motor control of the hand? J. Anatomy, 208:527--542, 2006.
• 12: Jacob O. Wobbrock , Brad A. Myers, Analyzing the input stream for character- level errors in unconstrained text entry evaluations, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.13 n.4, p.458-489, December 2006 [doi>10.1145/1188816.1188819]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

General Terms:
Experimentation, Human Factors, Performance

Keywords:
multi-tap, one-handed text entry, rhythmic tapping, touch