Recently, many full-sized keyboards have been designed to fold in various ways in an attempt to make them more transportable. The flexible membrane keyboard, one type of full sized keyboard, is unique because it is made from silicon rubber, thus it is fully flexible and water resistant. Although a number of flexible keyboard characteristics are the same as standard keyboards (i.e. key size, shape and spacing), key-switch and key clicking mechanisms are inherently different. Since there is little or no existing research on flexible keyboards, there is a current need for data to facilitate design of such keyboards for use. Typing performance and perceived usability of several flexible keyboards that differed in terms of material hardness (hard, medium, or soft) and key contact point shape (circular or square) were studied. The results supported the hypothesis that both typing performance and usability of the flexible membrane keyboard were affected by material hardness and contact point shape. Square shaped contact points led to increased typing speed and decreased error rates, and medium or soft hardness led to increased typing speed. The best flexible keyboard (perceived by participants) in general received neutral usability ratings. However, ratings for mobility and design were much higher than neutral. Overall, subjective and objective measures of performance and usability indicated that flexible keyboards that are made of silicon of a soft or medium hardness and with a square shaped contact points are preferred. / Master of Science

Gaze-typing opens up a new input channel, but its keyboard designs are not ready for everyday use. To investigate the gaze-typing keyboards for such use that are easy to learn, fast to type, and robust to use differences, I analyzed the usability of three widely used gaze-typing keyboards by a user study with typing performance measurements, synthesized the design space of everyday used gaze-typing keyboards under the topics of typing schemes and keyboard letter layouts, feedback, ease of text editing, and system design. In particular, I found gaze-typing keyboards need “tolerant” designs that allow implicit gaze control and balance between input ambiguity and typing efficiency. Therefore, I prototyped a gaze-typing keyboard using a shape-writing scheme meant for everyday typing by gaze gestures, with the adaption on segmenting the gaze locus when writing a word from continuous gaze data stream. The system affords real-time shape-writing in the speed of 11.70 WPM and the error rate of 0.14 evaluated with an experienced user and supports to type 20000+ words from the lexicon. / Blick-skrivande möjliggör en ny inmatningskanal, men dess tangentborddesign är inte än redo för dagligt bruk. För att utforska blick-skriftstangentbord för sådant bruk, som är enkla att lära sig använda, snabba att skriva med, och robusta för olika användning, analyserade jag användbarheten hos tre brett använda blick-skriftstangentbord genom en användarstudie med skrivprestationsmätningar, och syntetiserade ett designutrymme för blick-skriftstangentbord för dagsbruk baserat på teman av typningsscheman och tangentbordslayout, feed-back, användarvänlighet för text redigering, och system design. I synnerhet identifierade jag att blick-skriftstangentbord behöver ha "toleranta" designer som tillåter implicit blickkontroll och balans mellan Inmatningsambiguitet och typningseffektivitet. Därför prototypade jag ett blick-skriftstangentbord som använder ett formskriftsschema som är avsett för vardagligt skrivande med blickgester, och anpassat till att segmentera blickpunkten när du skriver ord från en kontinuerlig ström av blickdata. Systemet erbjuder realtidsformskrivning i hastigheten 11.70 WPM och felfrekvensen 0.14 utvärderat med en erfaren användare, och har stöd för att skriva fler än 20000 ord från lexikonet.