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.