The purpose of TiltType is to provide fast and reliable text entry to small watch or pager-like devices. It works by detecting the tilt of the device with a small onboard accelerometer. To enter text the user simply presses a button and holds it down, while tilting the device in the direction of the letter desired. When the desired letter is being displayed, the user stops pressing the button and the character is entered. The device is then ready for the next command. The letters are laid out in a tic-tac-toe fashion for each button, thus each button can access nine letters (e.g. right-forward, center-backward). So with three buttons, one can use the English alphabet. By pressing a combination of buttons, the user can write numbers, special characters, backspace and space.

Publications

Kurt Partridge, Saurav Chatterjee, Vibha Sazawal, Gaetano Borriello, and Roy Want.  TiltType: Accelerometer-Supported Text Entry for Very Small Devices. UIST 2002 technote. (.pdf)

Project Members

Acknowledgements