Gaze-typing for Everyday Use: Keyboard Usability Observations and a "Tolerant" Keyboard Prototype

Abstract

Gaze-typing opens up a new input channel, but its keyboard designs are not ready for everyday use. To investigate gaze-typing keyboards for such use that are easy to learn, fast to type, and robust to use differences, I analyzed the usability of three widely used gaze-typing keyboards by a user study with typing performance measurements, synthesized the design space of everyday used gaze-typing keyboards under the topics of typing schemes and keyboard letter layouts, feedback, ease of text editing, and system design. In particular, I found gaze-typing keyboards need “tolerant” designs that allow implicit gaze control and balance between input ambiguity and typing efficiency. Therefore, I prototyped a gaze-typing keyboard using a shape-writing scheme meant for everyday typing by gaze gestures, with the adaption on segmenting the gaze locus when writing a word from continuous gaze data stream. The system affords real-time shape-writing at the speed of 11.70 WPM and error rate of 0.14 evaluated with an experienced user and supports to type 20000+ words from the lexicon.