An Empirical Study of Typing Rates on mini-QWERTY Keyboards

Edward Clarkson, James Clawson, Kent Lyons, and Thad Starner.

Proceedings of CHI. Portland, OR. April 2004.

Abstract: We present a longitudinal study of mini-QWERTY keyboard use, examining the learning rates of novice mini-QWERTY users. The study consists of 20 twenty-minute typing sessions using two different-sized keyboard models. Subjects average over 31 words per minute (WPM) for the first session and increase to an average of 60 WPM by the twentieth. Individual subjects also exceed the upper bound of 60.74 WPM suggested by MacKenzie and Soukoreff's model of two-thumb text entry. We discuss our results in the context of this model.

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