Alphanumeric text entry is a challenge for Virtual Reality (VR) applications. VR enables new capabilities, impossible in the real world, such as an unobstructed view of the keyboard, without occlusion by the user's physical hands. Several hand representations have been proposed for typing in VR on standard physical keyboards. However, to date, these hand representations have not been compared regarding their performance and effects on presence for VR text entry. Our work addresses this gap by comparing existing hand representations with minimalistic fingertip visualization. We study the effects of four hand representations (no hand representation, inverse kinematic model, fingertip visualization using spheres and video inlay) on typing in VR using a standard physical keyboard with 24 participants. We found that the fingertip visualization and video inlay both resulted in statistically significant lower text entry error rates compared to no hand or inverse kinematic model representations. We found no statistical differences in text entry speed.
Relatively few text entry methods have been proposed for VR. @cite_21 speculate that the reason for this was that symbolic input may seam inappropriate for the immersive VR, and a belief that speech will be the one natural technique for symbolic input. Indeed, when comparing available techniques, they found speech to be the fastest medium for text entry at about 14 words-per-minute (wpm), followed by using a tracked stylus to select characters on a tablet (up to 12 wpm), a specially dedicated glove that could sense a pinch gesture between the thumb and each finger at 6 wpm, and last a commercial chord keyboard which provided 4 wpm. While voice control is becoming a popular input modality @cite_5 , it has severe limitations of ambient noise sensitivity, privacy, and possible obtrusiveness in a shared environment @cite_3 @cite_43 . It has also been argued that speech may interfere with the cognitive processes of composing text @cite_47 . Furthermore, while dictation of text may feel natural, it is less so for text editing. Correcting speech recognition errors is also a challenge (see Vertanen @cite_28 for a recent overview).
@cite_28 @cite_21 @cite_3 @cite_43 @cite_5 @cite_47
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Text entry user interfaces have been a bottleneck of non traditional computing devices. One of the promising methods is the virtual keyboard on touch screens. Various layouts have been manually designed to replace the dominant QWERTY layout. This paper presents two computerized quantitative design techniques to search for the optimal virtual keyboard. The first technique simulated the dynamics of a keyboard with “digraph springs” between keys, which produced a “Hooke’s” keyboard with 41.6 wpm performance. The second technique used a Metropolis random walk algorithm guided by a “Fitts energy” objective function, which produced a “Metropolis” keyboard with 43.1 wpm performance. The paper also models and evaluates the perfo rmance of four existing keyboard layouts. We corrected erroneous estimates in the literature and predicted the performance of QWERTY, CHUBON, FITALY, OPTI to be in the neighborhood of 30, 33, 36 and 38 wpm respectively. Our best design was 40 faster than QWERTY and 10 faster than OPTI, illustrating the advantage of quantitative user interface design techniques based on models of human performance over traditional trial and error designs guided by heuristics. Text entry has been a bottleneck of nontraditional computing devices. One of the promising methods is the virtual keyboard for touch screens. Correcting previous estimates on virtual keyboard efficiency in the literature, we estimated the potential performance of the existing Qwerty, FITALY, and OPTI designs of virtual keyboards to be in the neighborhood of 28, 36, and 38 words per minute (wpm), respectively. This article presents 2 quantitative design techniques to search for virtual keyboard layouts. The first technique simulated the dynamics of a keyboard with digraph springs between keys, which produced a Hooke keyboard with 41.6 wpm movement efficiency. The second technique used a Metropolis random walk algorithm guided by a "Fitts-digraph energy" objective function that quantifies the movement efficiency of a virtual keyboard. This method produced various Metropolis keyboards with different shapes and structures with approximately 42.5 wpm movement efficiency, which was 50 higher than Qwerty and 10... Eyes-free input is desirable for ubiquitous computing, since interacting with mobile and wearable devices often competes for visual attention with other devices and tasks. In this paper, we explore eyes-free typing on a touchpad using one thumb, wherein a user taps on an imaginary QWERTY keyboard while receiving text feedback on a separate screen. Our hypothesis is that users can transfer their typing ability obtained from visible keyboards to eyes-free use. We propose two statistical decoding algorithms to infer users’ eyes-free input: the absolute algorithm and the relative algorithm. The absolute algorithm infers user input based on the absolute position of touch endpoints, while the relative algorithm infers based on the vectors between successive touch endpoints. Evaluation results showed users could achieve satisfying performance with both algorithms. Text entry rate was 17-23 WPM (words per minute) depending on the algorithm used. In comparison, a baseline cursor-based text entry method yielded only 7.66 WPM. In conclusion, our research demonstrates for the first time the feasibility of thumb-based eyes-free typing, which provides a new possibility for text entry on ubiquitous computing platforms such as smart TVs and HMDs. Text input is an important part of the data annotation process, where text is used to capture ideas and comments. For text entry in immersive virtual environments, for which standard keyboards usually do not work, various approaches have been proposed. While these solutions have mostly proven effective, there still remain certain shortcomings making further investigations worthwhile. Motivated by recent research, we propose the speech-based multimodal text entry system SWIFTER, which strives for simplicity while maintaining good performance. In an initial user study, we compared our approach to smartphone-based text entry within a CAVE-like virtual environment. Results indicate that SWIFTER reaches an average input rate of 23.6 words per minute and is positively received by users in terms of user experience.