TypeBoard: Identifying Unintentional Touch on Pressure-Sensitive Touchscreen Keyboards

Text input is essential in tablet computer interaction. However, tablet software keyboards face the problem of misrecognizing unintentional touch, which affects efficiency and usability [29, 49]. In this paper, we proposed TypeBoard, a pressure-sensitive touchscreen keyboard that prevents unintentional touches. The TypeBoard allows users to rest their fingers on the touchscreen, which changes the user behavior: on average, users generate 40.83 unintentional touches every 100 keystrokes. The TypeBoard prevents unintentional touch with an accuracy of 98.88%. A typing study showed that the TypeBoard reduced fatigue (p < 0.005) and typing errors (p < 0.01), and improved the touchscreen keyboard’ typing speed by 11.78% (p < 0.005). As users could touch the screen without triggering responses, we added tactile landmarks on the TypeBoard, allowing users to locate the keys by the sense of touch. This feature further improves the typing speed, outperforming the ordinary tablet keyboard by 21.19% (p < 0.001). Results show that pressure-sensitive touchscreen keyboards can prevent unintentional touch, improving usability from many aspects, such as avoiding fatigue, reducing errors, and mediating touch typing on tablets.