Text input on a smartwatch QWERTY keyboard: tap vs. trace

Abstract

This study examines text input performance on a smartwatch using tap and trace input methods on a standard QWERTY keyboard (Swype(TM)). Participants were either experts or novices to the tracing technique on their smartphone. No users had experience typing on a smartwatch. Participants were able to type at speeds comparable to, or exceeding, those reported in the literature for smartphones and small screen devices. Both novices and tracing experts typed faster overall using the trace input method than the tap method and experts typed the fastest using trace (37WPM). Word error rates were also comparable to those reported for smartphone text input. These results suggest that using a standard QWERTY keyboard that allows both tap and trace for text input is a viable option on a smartwatch.