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Observations on typing from 136 million keystrokes

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Conference Object

Change log

Authors

Dhakal, V 
Feit, AM 
Kristensson, PO 
Oulasvirta, A 

Abstract

We report on typing behaviour and performance of 168,000 volunteers in an online study. The large dataset allows detailed statistical analyses of keystroking patterns, linking them to typing performance. Besides reporting distributions and confirming some earlier findings, we report two new findings. First, letter pairs typed by different hands or fingers are more predictive of typing speed than, for example, letter repetitions. Second, rollover-typing, wherein the next key is pressed before the previous one is released, is surprisingly prevalent. Notwithstanding considerable variation in typing patterns, unsupervised clustering using normalised inter-key intervals reveals that most users can be divided into eight groups of typists that differ in performance, accuracy, hand and finger usage, and rollover. The code and dataset are released for scientific use.

Description

Keywords

Text entry, modern typing behavior, large-scale study

Journal Title

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference Name

CHI '18: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

2018-April

Publisher

ACM
Sponsorship
EPSRC (1198)
EPSRC (via University of Dundee) (7836a-CRT)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/R004471/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/N010558/1)