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Learning gaze typing: what are the obstacles and what progress to expect?

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Abstract

Gaze interaction is a promising input modality for people who are unable to control their fingers and arms. This paper suggests a number of new metrics that can be applied to the analysis of gaze typing interfaces and to the evaluation of user performance. These metrics are derived from a close examination of eight subjects typing text by gazing on a dwell-time activated onscreen keyboard during a seven-day experiment. One of the metrics, termed “Attended keys per character”, measures the number of keys that are attended for each typed character. This metric turned out to be particularly well correlated to the actual numbers of errors committed (r = 0.915). In addition to introducing metrics specific for gaze typing, the paper discusses how the metrics could make remote progress monitoring possible and provides some general advice on how to introduce gaze typing for novice users.

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Acknowledgments

This research was partly supported by the COGAIN Network of Excellence, IST IU 6, Contract Number 511598, by a scientist exchange program based on agreements/memoranda of understanding between the Danish Rectors Conference and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and by the Grant-in-Aid for Encouragement of Young Scientist (A) (No. 19681017), The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. We would like to acknowledge Hiroyuki Sakai, Tokyo Institute of Technology, for his assistance with data collection in the experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Oh-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8552, Japan

    Hirotaka Aoki & Kenji Itoh

  2. Innovative Communication Group, IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark

    John Paulin Hansen

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  1. Hirotaka Aoki
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  2. John Paulin Hansen
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  3. Kenji Itoh
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Correspondence to Hirotaka Aoki.

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Aoki, H., Hansen, J.P. & Itoh, K. Learning gaze typing: what are the obstacles and what progress to expect?. Univ Access Inf Soc 8, 297–310 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-009-0152-5

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