Understanding Adoption Barriers to Dwell-Free Eye-Typing: Design Implications from a Qualitative Deployment Study and Computational Simulations

Eye-typing is a slow and cumbersome text entry method typically used by individuals with no other practical means of communication. As an alternative, prior HCI research has proposed dwell-free eye-typing as a potential improvement that eliminates time-consuming and distracting dwell-timeouts. However, it is rare that such research ideas are translated into working products. This paper reports on a qualitative deployment study of a product that was developed to allow users access to a dwell-free eye-typing research solution. This allowed us to understand how such a research solution would work in practice, as part of users’ current communication solutions in their own homes. Based on interviews and observations, we discuss a number of design issues that currently act as barriers preventing widespread adoption of dwell-free eye-typing. The study findings are complemented with computational simulations in a range of conditions that were inspired by the findings in the deployment study. These simulations serve to both contextualize the qualitative findings and to explore quantitative implications of possible interface redesigns. The combined analysis gives rise to a set of design implications for enabling wider adoption of dwell-free eye-typing in practice.