“BlindType” has been accepted by premium ACM journal in UbiComp

The work of Associate Professor Zhao Shengdong and his co-authors (Yiqin Lu, Chun Yu, Xin Yi, Yuanchun Shi) have paid off — “BlindType: Eyes-Free Text Entry on Handheld Touchpad by Leveraging Thumb’s Muscle Memory” has been accepted by Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT)! IMWUT is a premier journal series for research relevant to the post-PC era. It covers a broad range of topics, ranging from mobile systems, wearable technologies, to intelligent environments, and their scope includes research contributions in systems and infrastructures, new hardware and sensing techniques, and studies of user experiences and societal impact.

The BlindType paper explores eyes-free typing on a touchpad using one thumb, wherein a user taps on an imaginary QWERTY keyboard while receiving text feedback on a separate screen. The research demonstrates the feasibility of thumb-based eyes-free typing, which provides a new possibility for text entry on ubiquitous computing platforms such as smart TVs and HMDs. Eyes-free input is especially desirable for ubiquitous computing, since interacting with mobile and wearable devices often competes for visual attention with other devices and tasks.

Abstract:

In asynchronous online discussion, users actively reference visual materials (e.g., video, document) to provide supporting evidence and additional context. However, creating and comprehending complex references can be challenging, especially when there are multiple referents to refer, or when a referent is highly specific (e.g., specific sentences in a paper rather than the paper as a whole). To identify users’ challenges in making references with multiple and specific referents while using existing discussion tools, we conducted an observational study and a preliminary interview. Based on the design lessons, we built Korero, a discussion interface that aims to facilitate complex referencing actions. For evaluation, we compared Korero against conventional interfaces in two user studies with referencing tasks of different referential difficulty. We found that Korero not only significantly reduces the time and effort in making references with multiple and specific referents, but also shows potential in increasing users’ engagement with the discussion and referent materials.

Citation:

Yiqin Lu, Chun Yu, Xin Yi, Yuanchun Shi, and Shengdong Zhao. 2017. BlindType: Eyes-Free Text Entry on Handheld Touchpad by Leveraging Thumb’s Muscle Memory. Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 1, 2, Article 18 (June 2017), 24 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3090083

Full paper: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3090083

For more information about “BlindType”, you may contact Dr. Zhao Shengdong.