TangiSoft: Designing a Tangible Direct-Touch Tabletop Keyboard

TangiSoft is a hybrid of a physical and a soft keyboard designed specifically for digital tabletops. The aim of the design was to combine the advantages of tangible and direct-touch interaction in a tool for the tabletop. TangiSoft was realised by printing a keyboard on paper, tracking the paper, allowing text entry by direct-touch on the printed layout, and augmenting printed layout through projection. The design hypotheses were that making the keyboard tangible would improve mobility; using a printed layout would help in making possible a smaller yet high-resolution key indicators; and that providing digital prediction information would improve speed and accuracy of data entry. A number of studies were carried out as part of an incremental design process, both to explore user behavior (e.g. mobility) and performance (e.g. text entry rate). The results did not support all our hypotheses and demonstrated that our understanding of tangible interactions is still limited. © 2008 University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Printed and published by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Science, Claremont Tower, Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Bibliographical details SULAIMAN, A. N., OLIVIER, P., HESLOP, P. TangiSoft: Designing a Tangible Direct-Touch Tabletop Keyboard [By] A. N. Sulaiman, P. Olivier, P. Heslop. Newcastle upon Tyne: University of Newcastle upon Tyne: Computing Science, 2008. (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Science, Technical Report Series, No. CS-TR-1109)