Carnegie Mellon Offers Wee QWERTY Texting Tech For Impossibly Tiny Devices 100
coondoggie writes "If smartwatches and other ultra-small devices are to become the text generators of the future, their diminutive keyboards are going to have to be way more useful for, um, big fingered typists. Carnegie Mellon researchers may have the answer to that problem. Called ZoomBoard, the text entry technique is based on the iconic QWERTY keyboard layout."
The zoom board paper (PDF) has details. Entering a letter becomes a multi-step process; first you mash the general area of the keyboard containing the letter you want, and eventually it becomes large enough to hit. Test subjects managed to hit 9.3wpm after practice, versus 4.5 wpm for people trying to peck on a teeny-tiny virtual keyboard. They were inspired at least in part by the venerable Dasher input method.
Not as good as Morse (Score:5, Insightful)
People should just learn Morse code, only one button. It's the original text message tech.
And good Morse code operators go vastly faster than a mere 9.3 world per minute.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Just write on the screen (Score:4, Insightful)
The old Palm watch came with a tiny stylus that let you write on the touch screen using their Graffiti system. A normal palm had a separate part of the screen for writing. The watch has some why of switch the screen from tapping mode to writing mode.