Establishing a baseline for text entry for a multi-touch virtual keyboard

    Authors

    P. D. Varcholik; J. J. LaViola;C. E. Hughes

    Comments

    Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud.

    Keywords

    Multi-touch; Text entry; Speed; Accuracy; Text intensive applications; SOFT KEYBOARDS; Computer Science, Cybernetics; Ergonomics; Psychology, Multidisciplinary

    Abstract

    Multi-touch, which has been heralded as a revolution in human-computer interaction, provides features such as gestural interaction, tangible interfaces, pen-based computing, and interface customization-features embraced by an increasingly tech-savvy public. However, multi-touch platforms have not been adopted as "everyday" computer interaction devices that support important text entry intensive applications such as word processing and spreadsheets. In this paper, we present two studies that begin to explore user performance and experience with entering text using a multi-touch input. The first study establishes a benchmark for text entry performance on a multi-touch platform across input modes that compare uppercase-only to mixed-case, single-touch to multi-touch and copy to memorization tasks. The second study includes mouse style interaction for formatting rich text to simulate a word processing task using multi-touch input. As expected, our results show that users do not perform as well in terms of text entry efficiency and speed using a multi-touch interface as with a traditional keyboard. Not as expected was the result that degradation in performance was significantly less for memorization versus copy tasks, and consequently willingness to use multi-touch was substantially higher (50% versus 26%) in the former case. Our results, which include preferred input styles of participants, also provide a baseline for further research to explore techniques for improving text entry performance on multi-touch systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

    Volume

    70

    Issue/Number

    10

    Publication Date

    1-1-2012

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    657

    Last Page

    672

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000309695200002

    ISSN

    1071-5819

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