Jacob O. Wobbrock
Brad A. Myers
John A. Kembel
ABSTRACT
EdgeWrite is a new unistroke text entry method for handheld devices designed to provide high accuracy and stability of motion for people with motor impairments. It is also effective for able-bodied people. An EdgeWrite user enters text by traversing the edges and diagonals of a square hole imposed over the usual text input area. Gesture recognition is accomplished not through pattern recognition but through the sequence of corners that are hit. This means that the full stroke path is unimportant and recognition is highly deterministic, enabling better accuracy than other gestural alphabets such as Graffiti. A study of able-bodied users showed subjects with no prior experience were 18% more accurate during text entry with Edge Write than with Graffiti (p>.05), with no significant difference in speed. A study of 4 subjects with motor impairments revealed that some of them were unable to do Graffiti, but all of them could do Edge Write. Those who could do both methods had dramatically better accuracy with Edge Write.
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Index Terms
- EdgeWrite: a stylus-based text entry method designed for high accuracy and stability of motion
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Reviews
J. Wolper
A recent issue of The Economist claims that the market for personal digital assistants (PDAs) is waning, but personal observation (for example, my physician running from the examining room to fetch his PDA-based drug reference) casts some doubt on that claim. Many of us who use them have mastered, after a fashion, Palm's Graffiti stylus-based text input system. I still get curly brackets when I want square brackets, but the device was not designed for mathematics. More importantly, Graffiti was not designed for use by those with motor or visual impairments, nor for those who must enter data while in an unstable platform: imagine my physician using his while riding in a speeding ambulance. This paper describes EdgeWrite, an alternative entry system. Its technical description is concise and complete: a plastic template guides the stylus, thus helping the motor-impaired, and character recognition depends only on the sequence of corners visited by the stylus (so my square-versus-curly bracket problem would be solved). More important is the authors' discussion of EdgeWrite's dynamic corner-recognition algorithm. The authors present evidence supporting the hypothesis that EdgeWrite is superior, in the form of a randomized study of able-bodied users, and a smaller anecdotal study with motor-impaired users. The paper addresses the information content of each EdgeWrite character using the keystrokes per character (KSPC) metric. There is no mention of information-theoretic optimization. "E," the most common character in English, is a three-stroke character, as is "z," the least common character. Finally, the authors address the hardware limitations of PDA processors, but make no mention of software reliability. My personal experience with aftermarket software for the Palm OS is typified by the navigation program that insisted that my longitude was "south 112"; that is, reliability has been an issue. I have not been able to determine if this is a problem with Palm OS, or with those who develop software for it. If EdgeWrite is reliable, it will be a real benefit to many users. Online Computing Reviews Service
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