SwipeKey: a swipe-based keyboard design for smartwatches

Abstract

The rise of smartwatches calls for efficient, convenient and suitable text input methods for these small computers. The minuscule size of these screens brings many challenges on how to interact with these devices. Keyboard design requires optimization for these small screens to provide a good user experience and fast text entry method on these devices. We introduce SwipeKey, a text input method that uses swipe directions to allow multiple inputs per button and thus allows for an increase in the effective size of input buttons. We have conducted thorough experiments optimizing SwipeKey to create a fast, low-error, and easy to learn soft keyboard for smartwatches. These benefits result from having a keyboard that emphasizes the use of swipe motions. Our user study results show that with a specific combination of swipe directions and corresponding button size, SwipeKey users achieved a speed of 11 in words per minute (WPM), a 53% improvement from baseline (7.2 in WPM) and dramatically decreased character error rate (CER) from the baseline of 10% down to 3.4%.