Thinking about Text Input

Even with the advent of the GUI, touchscreen and voice recognition, the basic mechanism for text input remained mostly unchanged for more than 100 years. The keyboard and the QWERTY layout are still the most widely used method and still the fastest one.

The qwerty layout was developed in 1868 to be used int railroad ticket typewriting. After that many changes were made in the layout to try to improve the speed, the most famous being the DVORAK.  Anyway typing is quite fast. The world record is 216 words per minute, achieved on an electrical typewriter in 1968. The average typists is able to achieve 40 words per minute. Check the infographic and measure your own speed. 

Mobile devices, have  reduced space to house a full keyboard and virtual ones also lack haptic feedback.  This makes typing more challenging. To cope with this restrictions, most mobile keyboards utilize some kind of input prediction to correct words half typed or mistyped. This is an on going competition with several contenders such as swype, flesky, swiftkey and so on.  The great majority, however, are still variations of the original QWERTY keyboard.

The qwerty layout on a mechanical typewriter.

The latest high-tech variation.

When thinking about text input in immersive environments the situation gets further complicated. Besides the lack of haptic feedback for keys there is also a loss of the reference frame. If you want to keep your hands  away from a solid surface you eventually move away from the keyboard or cannot keep stroking at the same positions. I believe that a good text input method will be necessary to increase the range of applications using gestures and VR.

Researchers have come up with a lot different ideas for more natural or efficient text input in theses conditions.  However, none seems to have been established as a good solution for now, which is unfortunate.

For more information see: input methods