Investigating Ten-Finger Text Entry on Tablet PCs

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the performance and usability of ten-finger text entry on Tablet PCs. Background: Generally a soft keyboard is used on Tablet PCs. However, the soft keyboard's performance is usually worse than physical keyboard's performance. In this study, we proposed a modified keyboard for tablet PCs to improve the performance of ten-finger text entry and evaluated the performance and subjective ratings of the keyboard. Method: The modified soft keyboard that is suggested in this study was compared with current Google and Samsung soft keyboards on Tablet PCs. Results: The three keyboards were not significantly different in terms of typing speed, error rate, and mental workload and showed bad performance. Also, the subjective ratings were not shown positively. Conclusion: Based on our results, ten-finger text entry using soft keyboards on Tablet PCs seems to be very difficult. However, we need to research the possibility continuously since ten-finger text entry can improve typing speed. Application: Our study can be a starting point of research that explores ten-finger text entry on Tablet PCs. The new soft keyboard design can be one of the soft keyboard alternatives. However, the key factors to improve the performance and usability of the soft keyboard will not be 'key size' or 'convenience to typing special characters or numbers', but other factors (e.g., 'tactile feedback').