Learning to type with mobile keyboards: Findings with a randomized keyboard

Abstract This paper demonstrates the learning process of typing by tracing the development of eye and finger movement strategies over time. We conducted a controlled experiment in which users typed with Qwerty and randomized keyboards on a smartphone, allowing us to induce and analyze users’ behavioral strategies with different amounts of accumulated typing experience. We demonstrate how strategies, such as speed-accuracy trade-offs and gaze deployment between different regions of the typing interface depend on the amount of experience. The results suggest that, in addition to motor learning, the development of performance in mobile typing is attributable to the adaptation of visual attention and eye-hand coordination, in particular, the development of better location memory for the keyboard layout shapes the strategies. The findings shed light on how visuomotor control strategies develop during learning to type.