Smartwatches are being touted as the next big thing, but their capabilities are constrained by very small displays. Smartwatches basically act as a vessel for relaying smartphone or tablet information via Bluetooth. Lacking an onscreen keyboard, actual on-device interactions are limited to basic taps and swipes. This makes hashing out a response to a text message, for example, impossible unless you whip out your phone.
Enter ZoomBoard, a text entry method developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University designed for ultra-small computers like smartwatches. It makes a teensy onscreen keyboard actually usable after you tap on the screen once or twice to enlarge the keys.
“You aren’t going to write a novel, but it gets the job done,” said CMU Human-Computer Interaction Institute Ph.D. student Stephen Oney via a press release. Perhaps not a glowing review of the text input technique, but given that many existing models aren't powerful to handle voice recognition either (something Apple is widely considered to employ should it ever debut its own smartwatch), it certainly beats not having any input options at all.
The onscreen keyboard has a QWERTY layout, while a secondary keyboard with numbers and symbols can be accessed with an upwards swipe. Swiping right enters a space, a swipe to the left deletes a character, and by holding a key for moment longer you can capitalize it.
According to the team's research, presented in this paper, practice trials of this technology on a penny-sized 16 x 6mm keyboard resulted in users averaging 9.3 words per minute, with about the same accuracy as they'd have on a traditional keyboard. Even better, ZoomBoard's technology could eventually be enhanced with predictive text based on the first few letters you type, new keyboard layouts other than QWERTY, or gesture-based characters.
This is pretty good news. For short simple messages or searches, like typing a phone number, saying "I'm on my way," or navigating to a nearby business, having even a very basic keyboard input method would be useful. Even if a smartwatch had voice control, there are some situations where it'd be too noisy or inappropriate to start yapping at your wrist.
