TangiSoft: 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 directtouch interaction in a tool for the tabletop. TANGISOFT was realized 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 elicit two-handed interaction, leading to improved mobility, and better integration of text entry with higher level activities. The goal was to introduce a novel keyboard that is more suited to tabletop applications that require high mobility and frequent switching between text entry and other tasks. A study was conducted to explore and contrast people’s use of TANGISOFT and soft keyboards. The results showed that mobility is largely a characteristic of the user rather than the tool, but still, TANGISOFT did elicit twohanded interaction in which positioning the keyboard became a subconscious operation integrated with the larger activity and leading to more mobile users as compared to using a soft keyboard. These results mean that in a number of situations TANGISOFT is a more appropriate alternative to soft or conventional physical keyboards. © 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. An analysis of the dynamics of British academic science [By] A. 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-1130)