TangiSoft: A Tangible Direct-Touch Tabletop Keyboard

TangiSoft is a hybrid of a physical and a soft keyboard designed for digital tabletop learning settings and aims to combine the advantages of tangible and direct-touch interaction. TangiSoft was realized by tracking a keyboard printed on paper, allowing direct-touch text entry, and augmenting printed layout through projection. The design hypotheses were that the tangible characteristics would elicit two-handed interaction, leading to improved mobility, and better integration of text entry with high-level activities. The goal was to introduce a keyboard that is more suited to tabletop learning applications which require high mobility and frequent text entry. A study was conducted to explore people's use of TangiSoft as compared to soft keyboards. The results showed that mobility is largely a characteristic of the user rather than the tool, but still, TangiSoft did elicit two-handed interaction leading to greater user mobility.