Using a touch-sensitive wristband for text entry on smart watches

The ongoing miniaturization of computing devices enabled smart watches with capabilities almost on par with smart phones. Due to immanent size restrictions smart watches require specifically designed input and output techniques. In particular, entering text is often needed when interacting with computers but the watches' small size excludes common input techniques. In this paper we propose a text entry technique using a touch sensitive wristband. Using the wristband requires no screen space besides displaying the current character and might enable cheaper devices. In an experiment we compare a linear keyboard and a multitap keyboard layout. We show that users type faster and make fewer errors using multitap. We argue that the inexpensive sensors enable the integration in low cost wearable watches that require text entry occasionally.