Evaluation of thumbwheel text entry methods

Text entry becomes increasingly complex as devices shrink in size. This paper presents the findings of a comparison study of two thumbwheel text entry methods for mobile devices. In the first method, the character set (letters, numbers, punctuation) was implemented as a continuous loop. In the second method, characters were arranged in a two-level menu structure. Thumbwheel methods provide a viable and realistic alternative to keyboard, keypad, stylus, or voice text entry on ultra-small mobile devices.