Say hello to the Zoomboard SmartWatch Keyboard. As smart watches start to become the norm, companies are going to have to come up with new and inventive ways of inputting text on such a small screen. While there will be many smart watches that will be synced with smart phones, and some which might have voice input, researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University have come up with a way of typing right on your smart watches screen. It’s called Zoomboard.
Zoomboard displays a full Qwerty keyboard in its default mode, however this seemed like it would be too hard to type on for researchers Chris Harrison and Stephen Oney. That’s why they came up with the idea that tapping on the keyboard would zoom into it, making it much more simple to select the keys that you want.
Other functions that the system includes are that a swipe to the right puts in a space, and a swipe to the left deletes the previous character. The system also has predictive text and users using the system have been able to type at around 10 words per minute. This is far better than having to type on a tiny screen that is not using Zoomboard.
Zoomboard is the first step of many for typing on a smart watch. We are sure to see new and innovative ways of typing on your shiny new smart watch soon, but for now Zoomboard is a great step foreword.
