Few-key text entry revisited: mnemonic gestures on four keys

Authors:
Jacob Wobbrock;Brad Myers;Brandon Rothrock
Affiliations:
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2006

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Abstract

We present a new 4-key text entry method that, unlike most few-key methods, is gestural instead of selection-based. Importantly, its gestures mimic the writing of Roman letters for high learnability. We compare this new 4-key method to predominant 3-key and 5-key methods theoretically using KSPC and empirically using a longitudinal study of 5 subjects over 10 sessions. The study includes an evaluation of the 4-key method without any on-screen visualization-an impossible condition for the selection-based methods. Our results show that the new 4-key method is quickly learned, becoming faster than the 3-key and 5-key methods after just ~10 minutes of writing, although it produces more errors. Interestingly, removing a visualization of the gestures being made causes no detriment to the 4-key method, which is an advantage for eyes-free text entry.