Text Entry in Virtual Reality: A Comparison of 2D and 3D Keyboard Layouts

Abstract

Text entry is an important task in most interactive technologies in use today. Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming increasingly popular and is used in a variety of contexts, including tasks that involve text entry. With this being the case, it has become increasingly important to determine what the best keyboard layout is for text entry tasks in VR environments. To address this need, the current study compared two keyboard layouts, 2D (flat UI) and 3D (curved UI), with respect to text entry performance in VR. Results indicated that, compared to the 3D keyboard layout, using the 2D keyboard layout for the text entry task led to a greater number of words per minute, fewer corrections, and fewer redundant key presses while typing. These results indicate that the 2D keyboard layout was more efficient in VR text entry performance, compared to the 3D keyboard layout. Implications for the design and development of VR text entry tasks are discussed.