Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 7, 2026

An Assessment Method and Toolkit to Evaluate Keyboard Design on Smartphones
Published on: October 5, 2020
Virtual Sliding QWERTY: A new text entry method for smartwatches using Tap-N-Drag
Jae-Min Cha1, Eunjung Choi2, Jihyoun Lim3
1Dept. of Industrial and Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Gyungbuk, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
A smaller screen of smartwatches compare to conventional mobile devices such as PDAs and smartphones is one of the main factors that makes users to input texts difficult. However, several studies have only proposed a concept for entering texts for smartwatches without usability tests while other studies showed low text input performance. In this study, we proposed a new text entry method called Virtual Sliding QWERTY (VSQ) which utilizes a virtual qwerty-layout keyboard and a 'Tap-N-Drag' method to move the keyboard to the desired position. In addition, to verify VSQ we conducted a usability test with 20 participants for a combination of 5 key sizes and 4 CD-gains. As a result, VSQ achieved an average of 11.9 Words per Minute which was higher than previous studies. In particular, VSQ at 5 × 5 key size and 2×, or 3× CD-gain had the highest performance in terms of the quantitative and qualitative usability test.
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