Gestyboard : A 10-finger-system and gesture based text input system for multi-touchscreens with no need for tactile feedback

This paper presents a new text-entry approach for multitouch devices based on both the 10-finger-system and a unique gesture-to-key mapping to overcome the lack of tactile feedback on touchscreens. We use unique gestures for all 10 fingers based on the QWERTY layout. There are two classes of gestures: Taps and Slidings. Taps activate the keyboards central home keys while slidings are used for the remaining neighboring letters. The idea behind this is to perform the gestures without looking at the “virtual keyboard” and without tactile feedback. By coupling the gestures to the highly efficient 10-finger-system the performance of the text entry can also be improved. We developed a first prototype, called Gestyboard, and conducted an evaluation with 41 pupils who were familiar with the 10-finger-system. Through this evaluation, we are aiming to investigate the potential usability of the first Gestyboard prototype. The results revealed that despite the complexity of the finger gestures, the users were able to perform the text entry with our prototype, and the results also highlighted additional improvements to increase the performance of our concept. The Gestyboard prototype showed a large acceptance and enthusiasm among the users. This concept has been developed within the scope of the SpeedUp project.1. Author