Communications of the ACM
Carnegie Mellon Researchers Develop Zooming Technique for Entering Text Into Smartwatches, Ultra-Small Computers
The ZoomBoard, based on the QWERTY keyboard layout, could be used to enter test into ultra-small computers, like smartwatches.
Credit: Carnegie Mellon University
An iterative zooming technique developed by a team at Carnegie Mellon University could be used to enter text into ultra-small computers, such as smartwatches.
Based on the QWERTY keyboard layout, ZoomBoard enlarges an individual key until it can be comfortably and accurately pressed. The user taps the screen to enlarge a key, momentarily holds it for capital letters, swipes left to delete a character, swipes right for a space, and swipes upward to call up a secondary keyboard of numbers and other symbols.
"This opens up new possibilities for devices such as smartwatches, which generally lack any means of entering text, as many aren't powerful enough for voice recognition," notes Stephen Oney at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII).
Meanwhile, HCII's Chris Harrison says, "users can enter about 10 words per minute at high accuracy on a keyboard the size of a penny. That's plenty fast enough to dial a phone number, or enter 'where is pizza?' or get 'directions home.'"
The team presented their research May 1 at CHI 2013, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Paris.
From Carnegie Mellon University
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Abstracts Copyright © 2013 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
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