STAT: Subtle Typing Around the Thigh for Head-Mounted Displays

Abstract

In head-mounted display (HMD) interaction, text entry is frequently supported via some form of virtual touch, controller, or ray casting keyboard. While these options effectively support text entry, they often incur costs of additional external hardware, awkward movements, and hand encumbrance. We propose STAT, a low-cost, mobile, touch typing technique that leverages a smartphone screen located at the thigh, to support both tap and word gesture text input for HMDs. Through a controlled laboratory study, we explore the efficacy of our technique-including a comparison of typing in and out of an enclosed pocket-and present design recommendations for the opportunistic use of a personal touchscreen device positioned at a user's thigh for HMD text entry. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Text input; User studies.

A Review of Interaction Techniques for Immersive Environments

“…• Participant Sample: The average number of participants was 22.48 (SD = 11.22), with the largest sample being 73 [12] and the smallest 12 [14,36,60,66,88,97,100].…”

“…The multi-platform combination that was most frequently employed was handheld/headworn. 3 studies combined devices in tandem for a seamless multi-platform experience [36,87,100]. The remaining papers compared headworn and handheld interactions [50].…”

“…Again, assessments primarily concerned the influence of task, which was addressed in 5 papers, and output, which was explored in 3 papers. However, 1 study investigated in-pocket text input by the thigh [36] and another considered how walking different path types affected interaction in locomotion [34].…”