Shape-writing (aka gesture typing or swiping) is a word-based text entry method for touchscreen keyboards. It works by landing the finger on (or close to) the first character of the desired word and then sliding over all the other character keys without lifting the finger until the last word character is reached. This generates a trajectory of swiped characters on the keyboard layout which can be translated to a meaningful word by a statistical decoder. We hypothesize that swiping carries rich information about the user, such as demographic (e.g. age or gender) and behavioral (e.g. swiping familiarity or input finger) information. To test our hypothesis, we trained several sequence classifiers using different recurrent neural network architectures to predict demographic and behavioral correlates of users from swipe trajectories. We show that our sequence classifiers are always performing better than a random classifier, therefore we conclude that cognitive and motor control mechanisms are embodied and reflected in swipe trajectories, validating thus our research hypothesis. Taken together, our results have implications for user privacy. Currently swiping is supported by all mobile vendors and has millions of users, so people may be inadvertently profiled at an unprecedented granularity. Future work should consider new ways of addressing these issues without impacting the user's swiping experience.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.