Mobile Text Entry

The effects of hand posture on touch and gesture typing performance

May, 2019

The “best” technique for text entry using a touchscreen is highly contextual and depends on a variety of factors, including device size and mobility. We conduted a study to investigate the effects of hand posture on touch and gesture typing speed and accuracy on smart touchscreen keyboards. Our results show that hand posture significantly effects text entry speed, and that there are significant combined effects of hand posture and text entry technique. These results have implications for designers investigating mobile text entry or text entry on soft keyboards where hand posture is constrained.