STAR: Smartphone-analogous Typing in Augmented Reality

TL;DR

This paper introduces STAR, a novel AR text entry method that mimics smartphone two-thumb typing on a virtual keyboard over the hands, achieving promising speed and accuracy after practice.

Contribution

STAR is the first AR text entry technique that closely replicates smartphone typing, addressing the challenge of efficient text input in augmented reality environments.

Findings

Participants achieved 21.9 WPM after practice.

Error rate was 0.3% after 30 minutes.

Typing speed was 56% of smartphone speed.

Abstract

While text entry is an essential and frequent task in Augmented Reality (AR) applications, devising an efficient and easy-to-use text entry method for AR remains an open challenge. This research presents STAR, a smartphone-analogous AR text entry technique that leverages a user's familiarity with smartphone two-thumb typing. With STAR, a user performs thumb typing on a virtual QWERTY keyboard that is overlain on the skin of their hands. During an evaluation study of STAR, participants achieved a mean typing speed of 21.9 WPM (i.e., 56% of their smartphone typing speed), and a mean error rate of 0.3% after 30 minutes of practice. We further analyze the major factors implicated in the performance gap between STAR and smartphone typing, and discuss ways this gap could be narrowed.