Comparison of Three QWERTY Keyboards for a Smartwatch

Abstract

The QWERTY keyboard has been a de facto standard for computer text entry and continues to be one for mobile text entry such as for smartphones. It is not clear, however, that it will continue to be an option for text entry for much smaller devices such as smartwatches. In a series of user experiments, we examined the performance of the QWERTY keyboard when it is reduced to fit a small smartwatch screen. At the same time, we examined whether the ZoomBoard and the SplitBoard, which are QWERTY keyboards augmented by zooming and panning strategies, respectively, would be effective in comparison with a plain QWERTY keyboard. In Experiment 1, we evaluated the text entry performance of new users on the three QWERTY keyboards. In Experiment 2, we evaluated the relative performance of the three keyboards for three different screen sizes. In Experiment 3, we further observed how the keyboard performance changed when used in a mobile situation. Main results are: (i) users could adapt to a plain QWERTY keyboard even in the smallest screen cases. (ii) The SplitBoard consistently showed a better performance than other keyboards in all tested sizes. (iii) The SplitBoard showed a better performance than other keyboards in a mobile condition (treadmill) and was preferred most by participants.