Inaccuracy in Touch Screen Tapping

Abstract

Smart phones have become an essential handheld computing device in recent years. People use their phones while performing various routine activities such as standing, walking, traveling, shopping, eating, working etc. Text entry is one of the most common feature on smart phones. Performing routine activities and typing accurately on phones simultaneously has become difficult for users especially with touch screen keyboards. Touch screen keyboards also known as virtual keyboards lack tactile feedback and their typing mistakes are higher than physical keyboards. Although there has been extensive research in area of virtual keyboards for improving text entry on smart phones, still we lack a keyboard which can work better in all activities. Most of the research incorporated text entry in static position which can tackle stationary activities such as sitting, standing or lying down. While today’s demand is more than just static activities. In recent years walking activity has also been considered. As a result of this ongoing research many keyboards have been developed. This work aims to find out specific keyboards for specific activities. Instead of developing one keyboard which can work better in all activities, we analyze the performance of 5 existing virtual keyboards in three activities. We developed an application for text entry and 30 participants were asked to perform testing of our application. Participants were asked to fill a survey at the end of each activity. ANOVA analysis and pairwise comparisons showed that Android Landscape performed better in travelling and walking activities while sitting activity doesn’t show any significant performance difference among keyboards.