PianoText: transferring musical expertise to text entry

We present PianoText, a text entry method based on a piano keyboard with an optimized mapping between notes and chords of music to letters of the English language. PianoText exemplifies the idea of transferring musical expertise to a text entry task by computationally searching for mappings between frequent motor patterns while considering their n-gram frequency distributions and respecting constraints affecting the playability of music. In the Interactivity session, audience members with piano skills can transcribe text with PianoText, and a trained pianist will show that it allows him to generate text at speeds close to that of professional QWERTY-typists.