Gestyboard 2.0: A Gesture-Based Text Entry Concept for High Performance Ten-Finger Touch-Typing and Blind Typing on Touchscreens

This paper presents the second version of the Gestyboard, which is an innovative approach of text entry on multi-touch devices like tabletops or tablets. To overcome the lack of tactile feedback, we use unique gesture-to-key mappings for each finger according to the ten-finger touch-typing method. As a key feature, the Gestyboard only accepts keystrokes when they are performed with the finger corresponding to the ten-finger touch-typing method. This way, missing a keystroke is not possible, and therefore blind typing is naturally supported by the concept. The first version of the Gestyboard was optimized according to the qualitative and quantitative results of our first formal evaluation. This paper presents two new evaluations which give new insights on the comparative performance and conceptual improvements of the Gestyboard. In the second evaluation, our participants reached a speed of 108 cpm (characters per minute [21.6wpm]) and an error rate of 4% which is close to the performance of standard users on classic touchscreen keyboards. The third evaluation additionally revealed that our participants increased their typing speed with the Gestyboard by 44% and decreased their error rate by 48% in just 3 trial sessions. This steep learning curve is mostly due to the familiarity to the QWERTY layout.