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Stroke break analysis: a practical method to study timeout value for handwriting recognition input

Published: 19 September 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Handwriting recognition (HWR) input method has been considered to be one of the most usable text entry methods for handheld devices, especially for languages with large and complicated character sets such as Chinese. The paper studies stroke break times within handwritten characters and presents a new method for setting HWR timeout by examining the break time distributions. For multi-stroke character HWR input, a timeout is widely used as a segmentation technique to initiate the recognition process. In this paper, we examine the largest stroke break time in each character and explore the relationship between break time distribution and optimal HWR timeout. The study used Chinese as test material and the test independent variables were writing condition (input box, full screen) and user's posture while they were writing (hold device in hand, keep device on table). The main findings are: (1) the stroke break times are similar in full screen and input box conditions, though the users tend to write larger characters in full screen condition. (2) The stroke break times fit into a tight distribution. It is feasible to estimate optimal HWR timeout by studying stoke break time distribution. A nonparametric histogram method was used to model the stroke break distributions and it showed that typical Chinese HWR default timeouts are around 99% percentile in the distribution. (3) Differences in HWR stroke break distributions are very significant between individual users. The stroke break time analysis can also be applied to design HWR timeout customization scale.

References

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MacKenzie I. S., and Soukoreff R. W. (2002). Text entry for mobile computing: models and methods, theory and practice. Human-Computer Interaction, 17, 147--198.
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Goldberg D., and Richardson C. (1993). Touch-typing with a stylus, In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (INTERCHI' 93) (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, April 1993). ACM Press, New York, 80--87
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Marila J., and Ronkainen S. (2004). Time-out in user interface: the case of mobile text input. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8, 2, 110--116.
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Silfverberg M., MacKenzie I. S., and Korhonen P. (2000). Predicting text entry speed on mobile phones. In Proceedings of the ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI'00) (The Hague, Amsterdam, April 2000). ACM Press, New York, 9--16.
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Wu C., Yang Q., and Zhang K. (2003). Human performance modeling in temporary segmentation Chinese handwriting recognizer. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 35, 4, 483--491.
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Hinckley K., Baudisch P., Ramos G., and Guimbretiere F.(2005). Design and analysis of delimiters for selection-action pen gesture phrases in Scriboli. In Proceeding of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI'05) (Portland, Oregon, USA, April 2005) ACM Press, New York, 451--460.
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Li Y., Hinckley K. Guan Z., and Landay J. A. (2005). Experimental Analysis of Mode Switching Techniques in Pen-based User Interfaces. In Proceeding of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI'05) (Portland, Oregon, USA, April 2005) ACM Press, New York, 461--470.
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Wright C.E. (1993). Evaluating the special role of time in the control of handwriting. Acta Psychologica, 82, 5--52.

Cited By

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  • (2013)User Experience with Chinese Handwriting Input on Touch-Screen Mobile PhonesCross-Cultural Design. Methods, Practice, and Case Studies10.1007/978-3-642-39143-9_43(384-392)Online publication date: 2013
  • (2009)Immediate user performances with touch Chinese text entry solutions on handheld devicesProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services10.1145/1613858.1613928(1-2)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2009
  • (2006)Multi-stroke freehand text entry method using OpenVG and its application on mobile devicesProceedings of the First international conference on Technologies for E-Learning and Digital Entertainment10.1007/11736639_97(791-796)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2006

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  1. Stroke break analysis: a practical method to study timeout value for handwriting recognition input

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    MobileHCI '05: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Human computer interaction with mobile devices & services
    September 2005
    400 pages
    ISBN:1595930892
    DOI:10.1145/1085777
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 19 September 2005

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    Author Tags

    1. break
    2. distribution
    3. handwriting recognition
    4. stroke
    5. timeout

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    • (2013)User Experience with Chinese Handwriting Input on Touch-Screen Mobile PhonesCross-Cultural Design. Methods, Practice, and Case Studies10.1007/978-3-642-39143-9_43(384-392)Online publication date: 2013
    • (2009)Immediate user performances with touch Chinese text entry solutions on handheld devicesProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services10.1145/1613858.1613928(1-2)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2009
    • (2006)Multi-stroke freehand text entry method using OpenVG and its application on mobile devicesProceedings of the First international conference on Technologies for E-Learning and Digital Entertainment10.1007/11736639_97(791-796)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2006

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