Design of chording gloves as a text input device

Abstract

A chording input device for text input was developed in a Glove-typed interface using all the joints of the four fingers and thumbs of both hands. The glove-based device works for input of Korean characters as well as Roman- alphabet, Braille characters, and numbers using mode conversion among the respective keymaps. To minimize finger force and fatigue from repeated finger motions, input switch was made of conductible silicon ink, which is easy to apply to any type of surface, light, and enduring. The chording gloves showed comparable performances in Korean text input tasks with input keypads of mobile phones, but proved to be inferior to conventional keyboards. Subjects' performance showed that the chording gloves can input approximately 108 characters per minute in Korean, but needs further ergonomic consideration to reduce keying errors. The chording gloves developed in the study can be used with common computing devices such as PCs and PDAs in mobile environments. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.