One-key keyboard: a very small QWERTY keyboard supporting text entry for wearable computing

Most of the commercialized wearable text input devices are wrist-worn keyboards that have adopted the minimization method of reducing keys. Generally, a drastic key reduction in order to achieve sufficient wearability increases KSPC (Keystrokes per Character), decreases text entry performance, and requires additional effort to learn a new typing method. We are faced with wearability-usability tradeoff problems in designing a good wearable keyboard. To address this problem, we adopted a new keyboard minimization method of reducing key pitch and have developed the One-key Keyboard. The traditional desktop keyboard has one key per character, but One-key Keyboard has only one key (70mmX35mm) on which a 10*5 QWERTY key array is printed. One-key Keyboard detects the position of the fingertip at the time of the keying event and figures out the character entered. We conducted a text entry performance test comprised of 5 sessions. The participants typed 18.9WPM with a 6.7% error rate over all sessions and achieved up to 24.5WPM. From the experiment's results, the One-key Keyboard was evaluated as a potential text input device for wearable computing, balancing wearability, social acceptance, input speed, and learnability.