Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

A program of research is proposed that will focus on "text and context in mobile computing". By "text", we refer simply to the issue of text entry. With over 1 billion SMS messages sent per day worldwide, the mobile phone keypad is today one of the dominant devices for text entry - this despite its poor capabilities for such. And so, a program of research in mobile text entry is extremely worthwhile. By "context", we refer to the many possible mechanisms to aide text entry through embedded knowledge of the language, user, or device. Word prediction, word completion, suffix completion, are some examples, but the general problem of interfacing with ambiguous keyboards (e.g., the mobile phone keyboard has either 3 or 4 letters per key) is of particular interest. As mobile devices shrink in size, there is increasing interest in supporting text entry with fewer keys than even a mobile phone contains. This presents an interesting combination of problems, intermixing issues of ambiguity resolution with an embedded language model. There is a tension between increasing keystrokes for ambiguity resolution (as the number of keys decreases) and decreasing keystrokes using predictive aides. This is fertile ground for research and it is the primary focus of the program of research proposed. Besides physical keyboards, soft keyboards or other interfaces that require input using a stylus or finger-touch are also considered. The PI also works extensively with computer pointing devices, models of interaction (e.g., using Fitts' law), and the measurement of human performance. These topics are also part of the proposed program of research.