research-article

Open access

Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes

Authors:

Anna Maria Feit,

Per Ola Kristensson,

Antti OulasvirtaAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Paper No.: 646, Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174220

Published: 21 April 2018 Publication History

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 that are 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 sur- prisingly 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.

Supplementary Material

ZIP File (pn4874.zip)

See Read Me In Zip.

Download
200.50 KB

References

[1]

2017. Rollover Key. (2017). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(key) Last accessed 2017/09/12.

[2]

Salil P Banerjee and Damon L Woodard. 2012. Biometric authentication and identification using keystroke dynamics: A survey. Journal of Pattern Recognition Research 7, 1 (2012), 116--139.

[3]

Edward Clarkson, Kent Lyons, James Clawson, and Thad Starner. 2007. Revisiting and validating a model of two-thumb text entry. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 163--166.

Digital Library

[4]

August Dvorak, Nellie L Merrick, William L Dealey, and Gertrude C Ford. 1936. Typewriting behavior. Vol. 1. New York: American Book Company.

[5]

Anna Maria Feit, Daryl Weir, and Antti Oulasvirta. 2016. How we type: Movement strategies and performance in everyday typing. In Proceedings of the 2016 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 4262--4273.

Digital Library

[6]

S.M. Furnell, I. Papadopoulos, and P. Dowland. 2004. A long-term trial of alternative user authentication technologies. Information Management & Computer Security 12, 2 (2004), 178--190.

[7]

Donald R Gentner. 1983. Keystroke timing in transcription typing. In Cognitive aspects of skilled typewriting. Springer, 95--120.

[8]

Laura Germine, Ken Nakayama, Bradley C Duchaine, Christopher F Chabris, Garga Chatterjee, and Jeremy B Wilmer. 2012. Is the Web as good as the lab? Comparable performance from Web and lab in cognitive/perceptual experiments. Psychonomic bulletin & review 19, 5 (2012), 847--857.

[9]

Mayank Goel, Alex Jansen, Travis Mandel, Shwetak N Patel, and Jacob O Wobbrock. 2013. ContextType: using hand posture information to improve mobile touch screen text entry. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2795--2798.

Digital Library

[10]

Joachim Grabowski. 2008. The internal structure of university students' keyboard skills. Journal of writing research 1, 1 (2008).

[11]

David Graff and Christopher Cieri. 2003. English gigaword LDC2003T05. (2003). https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2003T05

[12]

Jonathan T Grudin. 1983. Error patterns in novice and skilled transcription typing. In Cognitive aspects of skilled typewriting. Springer, 121--143.

[13]

Niels Henze, Enrico Rukzio, and Susanne Boll. 2012. Observational and experimental investigation of typing behaviour using virtual keyboards for mobile devices. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2659--2668.

Digital Library

[14]

Yuzuru Hiraga, Yoshihiko Ono, and Yamada-Hisao. 1980. An analysis of the standard English keyboard. In Proceedings of the 8th conference on Computational linguistics -. Association for Computational Linguistics, Morristown, NJ, USA, 242.

Digital Library

[15]

Rick Joyce and Gopal Gupta. 1990. Identity authentication based on keystroke latencies. Commun. ACM 33, 2 (1990), 168--176.

Digital Library

[16]

Akiyo Kano, Janet C Read, Alan Dix, and I Scott MacKenzie. 2007. ExpECT: an expanded error categorisation method for text input. In Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: HCI... but not as we know it-Volume 1. British Computer Society, 147--156.

Digital Library

[17]

Clare-Marie Karat, Christine Halverson, Daniel Horn, and John Karat. 1999. Patterns of entry and correction in large vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 568--575.

Digital Library

[18]

Marcus Karnan, Muthuramalingam Akila, and Nishara Krishnaraj. 2011. Biometric personal authentication using keystroke dynamics: A review. Applied Soft Computing 11, 2 (2011), 1565--1573.

Digital Library

[19]

Leonard Kaufman and Peter J. Rousseeuw. 1990. Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction to Cluster Analysis. John Wiley.

[20]

Nina Keith and K Anders Ericsson. 2007. A deliberate practice account of typing proficiency in everyday typists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 13, 3 (2007), 135.

[21]

Sunjun Kim, Jeongmin Son, Geehyuk Lee, Hwan Kim, and Woohun Lee. 2013. TapBoard: making a touch screen keyboard more touchable. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 553--562.

Digital Library

[22]

Per Ola Kristensson and Keith Vertanen. 2012. Performance Comparisons of Phrase Sets and Presentation Styles for Text Entry Evaluations. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 29--32.

Digital Library

[23]

Vladimir I Levenshtein. 1966. Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals. In Soviet physics doklady, Vol. 10. 707--710.

[24]

Gordon D Logan, Jana E Ulrich, and Dakota RB Lindsey. 2016. Different (Key) Strokes for Different Folks: How Standard and Nonstandard Typists Balance Fitts' Law and Hick's Law. (2016).

[25]

I Scott MacKenzie and R William Soukoreff. 2002. A model of two-thumb text entry. Space 67 (2002), 18--43.

[26]

I. Scott MacKenzie and R. William Soukoreff. 2003. Phrase Sets for Evaluating Text Entry Techniques. In CHI '03 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '03). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 754--755.

Digital Library

[27]

Martin Maechler. 2017. clara function | R Documentation. (2017). https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/ cluster/versions/2.0.6/topics/clara Last accessed 2017/09/18.

[28]

Jochen Musch and Ulf-Dietrich Reips. 2000. A Brief History of Web Experimenting. In Psychological Experiments on the Internet, Michael H Birnbaum (Ed.). Elsevier, 61--87.

[29]

Ngoc Tran Nguyen. 2016. Distance-based classification of keystroke dynamics. In First International Workshop on Pattern Recognition. International Society for Optics and Photonics, 100111E--100111E.

[30]

Katharina Reinecke and Krzysztof Z Gajos. 2015. LabintheWild: Conducting large-scale online experiments with uncompensated samples. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. ACM, 1364--1378.

Digital Library

[31]

Ulf-Dietrich Reips. 2000. The Web Experiment Method: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Solutions. In Psychological Experiments on the Internet., Michael H. Birnbaum (Ed.). Academic Press, Chapter 4, 89--117.

[32]

Martina Rieger and Victoria KE Bart. 2016. Typing Style and the Use of Different Sources of Information during Typing: An Investigation Using Self-Reports. Frontiers in psychology 7 (2016).

[33]

Timothy A Salthouse. 1984. Effects of age and skill in typing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113, 3 (1984), 345.

[34]

Timothy A Salthouse. 1986. Perceptual, cognitive, and motoric aspects of transcription typing. Psychological bulletin 99, 3 (1986), 303.

[35]

Frode Eika Sandnes. 2005. Evaluating Mobile Text Entry Strategies with Finite State Automata. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices &; Services (MobileHCI '05). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 115--121.

Digital Library

[36]

LH Shaffer and J Hardwick. 1968. Typing performance as a function of text. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 20, 4 (1968), 360--369.

[37]

Paul D Varcholik, Joseph J LaViola, and Charles E Hughes. 2012. Establishing a baseline for text entry for a multi-touch virtual keyboard. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 70, 10 (2012), 657--672.

Digital Library

[38]

K. Vertanen and P.O. Kristensson. 2011. A versatile dataset for text entry evaluations based on genuine mobile emails. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. ACM, 295--298.

Digital Library

[39]

Jacob O Wobbrock. 2007. Measures of text entry performance. Morgan Kaufmann.

[40]

Jacob O Wobbrock and Brad A Myers. 2006. Analyzing the input stream for character-level errors in unconstrained text entry evaluations. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 13, 4 (2006), 458--489.

Digital Library

[41]

Changxu Wu and Yili Liu. 2008. Queuing network modeling of transcription typing. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 15, 1 (2008), 6.

Digital Library

[42]

Xin Yi, Chun Yu, Weinan Shi, Xiaojun Bi, and Yuanchun Shi. 2017. Word Clarity As a Metric in Sampling Keyboard Test Sets. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4216--4228.

Digital Library

[43]

Ying Yin, Tom Yu Ouyang, Kurt Partridge, and Shumin Zhai. 2013. Making touchscreen keyboards adaptive to keys, hand postures, and individuals: a hierarchical spatial backoff model approach. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2775--2784.

Digital Library

Cited By

Acien AMorales AGiancardo LVera-Rodriguez RHolmes AFierrez JArroyo-Gallego T(2025)KeyGAN: Synthetic keystroke data generation in the context of digital phenotypingComputers in Biology and Medicine10.1016/j.compbiomed.2024.109460184(109460)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2024.109460
Carl M(2024)An Active Inference Agent for Modeling Human Translation ProcessesEntropy10.3390/e2608061626:8(616)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/e26080616
Stafford LPreston CPike A(2024)Participant Use of Artificial Intelligence in Online Focus Groups: An Experiential AccountInternational Journal of Qualitative Methods10.1177/1609406924128641723Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069241286417
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes
1. Human-centered computing

Recommendations

Characterizing In-Air Eyes-Free Typing Movements in VR
VRST '20: Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology

We empirically explore fundamental requirements for achieving VR in-air typing by observing the unconstrained eyes-free in-air typing of touch typists. We show that unconstrained typing movements differ substantively from previously observed constrained ...
HGaze Typing: Head-Gesture Assisted Gaze Typing
ETRA '21 Full Papers: ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications

This paper introduces a bi-modal typing interface, HGaze Typing, which combines the simplicity of head gestures with the speed of gaze inputs to provide efficient and comfortable dwell-free text entry. HGaze Typing uses gaze path information to compute ...
Why Is Gesture Typing Promising for Older Adults?: Comparing Gesture and Tap Typing Behavior of Older with Young Adults
ASSETS '18: Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Gesture typing has been a widely adopted text entry method on touchscreen devices. We have conducted a study to understand whether older adults could gesture type, how they type, what are the strengths and weaknesses of gesture typing, and how to further ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2018

8489 pages

ISBN:9781450356206

DOI:10.1145/3173574

General Chairs:
Regan Mandryk
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
,
Mark Hancock
University of Waterloo, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Mark Perry
Brunel University London, UK
,
Anna Cox
University College London, UK

Copyright © 2018 Owner/Author.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 April 2018

Check for updates

Badges

Honorable Mention

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

european research council

Conference

CHI '18

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

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

April 21 - 26, 2018

Montreal QC, Canada

Acceptance Rates

CHI '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 666 of 2,590 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025

Sponsor:
sigchi

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

97
Total Citations
View Citations
4,549
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)868
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)129

Reflects downloads up to 22 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Acien AMorales AGiancardo LVera-Rodriguez RHolmes AFierrez JArroyo-Gallego T(2025)KeyGAN: Synthetic keystroke data generation in the context of digital phenotypingComputers in Biology and Medicine10.1016/j.compbiomed.2024.109460184(109460)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2024.109460
Carl M(2024)An Active Inference Agent for Modeling Human Translation ProcessesEntropy10.3390/e2608061626:8(616)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/e26080616
Stafford LPreston CPike A(2024)Participant Use of Artificial Intelligence in Online Focus Groups: An Experiential AccountInternational Journal of Qualitative Methods10.1177/1609406924128641723Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069241286417
Chiossi FEl Khaoudi YOu CSidenmark LZaky AFeuchtner TMayer S(2024)Evaluating Typing Performance in Different Mixed Reality Manifestations using Physiological FeaturesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36981428:ISS(377-406)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698142
Richardson MBotros FShi YSnow BGuo PZhang LDong JVertanen KMa SWang R(2024)StegoType: Surface Typing from Egocentric CamerasAdjunct Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3672539.3686762(1-14)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672539.3686762
Santos AMendonça Â(2024)Autocorrection in Projectional EditorsCompanion Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming10.1145/3660829.3660844(94-98)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3660829.3660844
Richardson MBotros FShi YGuo PSnow BZhang LDong JVertanen KMa SWang R(2024)StegoType: Surface Typing from Egocentric CamerasProceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3654777.3676343(1-14)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3654777.3676343
Serafini ROtto CHorstmann SNaiakshina ARoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)ChatGPT-Resistant Screening Instrument for Identifying Non-ProgrammersProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3639075(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3639075
Wu JWang ZWang LDuan YLi J(2024)FanPad: A Fan Layout Touchpad Keyboard for Text Entry in VR2024 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR58804.2024.00045(222-232)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VR58804.2024.00045
Van hamme TGarofalo GArgones Rúa EPreuveneers DJoosen W(2024)A Novel Evaluation Framework for Biometric Security: Assessing Guessing Difficulty as a MetricIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2024.345593019(8369-8384)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2024.3455930
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents