Automatic whiteout++: correcting mini-QWERTY typing errors using keypress timing

  • Authors:
  • James Clawson;Kent Lyons;Alex Rudnick;Robert A. Iannucci, Jr.;Thad Starner

  • Affiliations:
  • Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA;Intel Research, Santa Clara, CA, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2008

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.01

Visualization

Abstract

By analyzing features of users' typing, Automatic Whiteout++ detects and corrects up to 32.37% of the errors made by typists while using a mini-QWERTY (RIM Blackberry style) keyboard. The system targets "off-by-one" errors where the user accidentally presses a key adjacent to the one intended. Using a database of typing from longitudinal tests on two different keyboards in a variety of contexts, we show that the system generalizes well across users, model of keyboard, user expertise, and keyboard visibility conditions. Since a goal of Automatic Whiteout++ is to embed it in the firmware of mini-QWERTY keyboards, it does not rely on a dictionary. This feature enables the system to correct errors mid-word instead of applying a correction after the word has been typed. Though we do not use a dictionary, we do examine the effect of varying levels of language context in the system's ability to detect and correct erroneous keypresses.