Evaluation of Virtual Keyboards for Interactive Digital Television Applications

The development of the technologies behind Interactive Digital Television (IDTV) services has produced a new type of audience. Traditional viewers now become users as they may play an active role in front of the TV, for example, by choosing a video to be played on demand or by introducing text on an IDTV application. In these services, interactions need to be performed with a remote control, currently the main interaction device, or other devices such as keyboards or mice, which are not very popular in this environment. Nevertheless, although remote controls are essential tools for IDTV services, they are very limited when it comes to writing text. Thus, this study evaluated different alternatives to introduce text on an IDTV application with a remote control. A heterogeneous group of people was selected to write predefined sentences in Spanish in a test environment using three virtual keyboard layouts and the multitap mechanism. Their performance and subjective impressions reveal weaknesses and strengths of the evaluated methods. The article draws important conclusions about the usage of remote controls in IDTV applications, not only for the design of new applications but also for the research of new techniques to introduce text.