Manipulating text on a smart watch presents significant challenges due to several factors, including the small size of these devices, the lack of tactile feedback, and the fat finger problem. Many contemporary smart watches, besides a small number of buttons, are equipped with a rotary-crown, which can be pressed or rotated to perform some operations. Interaction via the rotating crown enables text manipulation even when touch input is impractical or unavailable such as when wearing gloves, in wet conditions, or in cases of reduced precision like the ’fat finger’ problem. This demonstration introduces two different techniques to manipulate text which leverage on the rotary-crown of the smart watch.
In the text entry technique by rotating the crown, the user can navigate to and select the desired character, which is then input by pressing the corresponding key to confirm the selection. The method was evaluated in comparison to the touch-interaction: the results demonstrated that participants achieved higher accuracy with the rotary-crown input, with a Total Error Rate of 9%; conversely, participants exhibited faster performance with the touch-interaction, achieving a typing speed of 9.3 words per minute.
The text editing technique allows the cursor to be moved by rotating the crown, while still retaining the ability for the user to position the cursor by tapping on the screen at the desired location. The method was evaluated against the default touch editing interaction of WearOS: on a set of editing tasks the results showed participants achieved 30% faster speed with the rotary-crown editing method; moreover the number of tasks participants had to repeat due to errors also decreased by 78% with the rotary-crown editing method.
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Interactive Techniques for Entering and Editing Text on Smart Watches Through the Rotary-Crown