Eyes on the Road, Hands on the Wheel: Thumb-based Interaction Techniques for Input on Steering Wheels Iván E. González,1* Jacob O. Wobbrock,2 Duen Horng Chau,1 Andrew Faulring1 and Brad A. Myers1 1 Human-Computer Interaction Institute 2 The Information School School of Computer Science University of Washington Carnegie Mellon University Mary Gates Hall, Box 352840 Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Seattle, WA 98195-2840 {ieg, dchau, faulring, bam}@cs.cmu.edu
[email protected] ABSTRACT The increasing quantity and complexity of in-vehicle systems creates a demand for user interfaces which are suited to driving. The steering wheel is a common location for the placement of buttons to control navigation, entertainment, and environmental systems, but what about a small touchpad? To investigate this question, we embedded a Synaptics StampPad in a computer game steering wheel and evaluated seven methods for selecting from a list of over 3000 street names. Selection speed was meas- ured while stationary and while driving a simulator. Results show that the EdgeWrite gestural text entry method is about 20% to 50% faster than selection-based text entry or direct list-selection methods. They also show that methods with slower selection speeds generally resulted in faster driving speeds. However, with EdgeWrite, participants were able to maintain their speed and avoid incidents while selecting and driving at the same time. Al- though an obvious choice for constrained input, on-screen key- boards generally performed quite poorly. CR Categories: H.5.2. Information interfaces and presentation: User interfaces — Input devices and strategies. Figure 1. The first author performing input on a small touchpad with his right thumb during simulated driving.