Text Entry

Work so far

My text entry work has three sides. Firstly, I have evaluated text entry methods experimentally. Secondly, I have modeled user performance with them. Thirdly, to do the experiments, I have constructed systems that allow me to quickly build text entry method implementations. Below is a short summary of my work. For details see the list of publications.

Experiments

I have run experiments to collect data on user performance on the following text entry methods: A minimal device-independent text entry method, Quikwriting (with stylus, gamepad, and keyboard), Desktop QWERTY keyboard, Handwriting, QWERTY sof-keyboard, Menu-augmented QWERTY soft-keyboard, numeric entry on a touchpad.

Models

I have studied the following aspects of text entry performance modeling: Character drawing time with a stylus, Learning rate, Error in learning rate predictions, maximal expert text entry rate on keyboards.

Systems

My current prototyping architecture has eveloved over the years from individual stand-alone Windows applications to a Linux-based modular system written in C++ to a Java-based architecture where text entry method implementations, can be loaded and unloaded at will. The purpose of the current system is to enable "compile once - run everywhere" -like behavior for the text entry modules. Having something like this makes the effort of implementing multi-platform text entry methods much smaller. So far, however, I am the only one to enjoy this benefit. Implementations of the server-side code that enables the platform-independent modules to run exists for Windows and Linux only. It is also a pain to set up and in no way ready for end user installation.

Plans for the future

Markets for text entry enterpreneurs are not open. A multi-platform server that could run the same text entry method implementations on desktop computers and mobile devices would change this. I plan to help whoever undertakes such a project. The difficult part is getting enough support from the big players or enough resources to do the implementations on several major platforms such as .Net, Linux, Symbian, and Mac OS.

Running text entry experiments is fun. You know so much more about the performance of the system after running a longitudinal study. I plan to do this whenever I have the resources and a promising system turns up. I think that it is just great to have some impartial data to consider along with talk of the inventors and marketing people.

Now that I am done with my thesis work I am much more open to collaboration proposals. I have a more relaxed research schedule and no pressure to appear as the first author of every paper that I work on. So if you have a text entry idea, feel free to contact me. I enjoy learning about new systems and sometimes I may even have a useful suggestion or two for further development.

More on text entry

See the link list for links to other text entry researchers and their work. Within TAUCHI Grigori Evreinov and his students have done some text entry work.