Reading Assignment: The Word-Gesture Keyboard: Reimagining Keyboard Interaction

Reference Information
Title: The Word-Gesture Keyboard: Reimagining Keyboard Interactions
Authors: Shumin Zhai and Per Ola Kristensson
Citation: "The Word-Gesture Keyboard: Reimagining Keyboard Interactions", Shumin Zhai and Per Ola Kristensson, Communications of the ACM, pp. 91-101, 2012.

Summary
This paper discussed word-gesture, an alternative method of interaction for text input when using touch-screen keyboards, such as on mobile devices. The interaction consists of the action of swiping a single finger across the soft keyboard on a touch screen, running the finger consecutively across each letter of a word in one, fluid motion. It is designed to be a faster method of text input than using a traditional physical keyboard, but it still uses the same keyboard design so it is intended to be easy to learn and with the ability to improve usage speed with time. The faster speed of the word-gesture system stems from the fact that only a single continuous motion made with one finger is necessary to create a word and spaces are automatically inserted between the words. Ease of use comes from the fact that users are already familiar with the keyboard design, gestures come more naturally than the traditional usage of physical keyboards, and that no gestures are required to be learned since the user simply follows the pattern of keys that are visible on the screen.

The shape of the gesture that is created with this motion is compared against a set of pre-known gestures that are already associated with words in order to perform gesture recognition. The ability to enter commands (such as copy and paste) was added along with the ability to type words. Indexing and pruning are used to make the searching of the known gestures feasible for mobile devices.

The word-gesture method was tested through some experimentation along with releasing it as an application for mobile devices in order to receive feedback from real users of the system. The experiments included testing users on the ability to memorize gesture shapes and the speed of users' initial uses. Reviews made by users of the released application for mobile devices were used for evaluating the general conception of the system itself. One of the major contributions of word-gesture is that by releasing it as an actual product for people to use, the idea became more widespread, allowing for the proliferation of this new technique of text input.

Thoughts
It was really great to be able to read this paper about a recent system that is now in fairly widespread use in daily life. I have seen variations of this system on my own phone and therefore can relate my own experience with it to the information gained from reading this paper. Many of the papers that we read discuss systems that are not well known; however, the contribution of this paper is known by many now. This made it very interesting to learn how this method that I was previously aware of actually works.

I think that it is a very interesting concept to introduce a new method like this that relies mostly on previously-known concepts such as the physical keyboard. The fact that the user is not required to learn any new gestures, but simply to apply a new type of motion to a well-known system, is a very intriguing idea. It makes one start to think about what other types of new interaction can be applied to existing systems in order to improve upon their usage.

The focus on human psychology that was used in the creation and evaluation of the method was great to read about, since it was discussed why this method actually works. In addition, it was great to see that the main evaluation of the system occurred by putting it into real-world usage and obtaining actual reviews of the product, instead of simply running lab experiments to try and approximate real-world usage.