Shift+Tap or Tap+LongPress?: The Upper Bound of Typing Speed on InScript

This paper presents the results of a within-subject longitudinal evaluation on Inscript keyboard, which is the national standard layout for Indian scripts. We studied the practical upper bound speed and accuracy as well as the effect of practice. Through longitudinal transcription task of 400 repeated attempts, we observed typing speeds for highly experienced users consistently peak close to 120 cpm i.e. 2.5 times that of fastest speeds reported in literature. Our analysis compared the lower bound times for Tap, Tap+LongPress and Shift+Tap, the three text input mechanisms in this keyboard. Among the two alternative methods, our findings established Tap+LongPress method to be faster than Shift+Tap method and almost equally accurate. Also, we derived a model which explains the influence of corrected errors and number of practice attempts on the typing speed.