Drag-and-type: a new method for typing with virtual keyboards on small touchscreens

Small touchscreens are widely used in consumer electronics, such as smartphones and mobile electronic devices. However, typing on the small touchscreen is still worth studying. In fact, smartphone users are experiencing difficulties and also many errors in typing alphanumeric keys with their thumbs because a small virtual keyboard even with the reduced set of touchable keys can only provide tiny size keys to the users. This paper studies a new style of typing method called Drag-and-Type, which leverages the dragging action instead of direct tapping on the touchscreen to ease more accurate typing on the small virtual keyboard. Although the typing speed is controversial, the consumers can choose this method when an accurate typing is more required, for example, for a password entry that is quite more sensitive to erroneous key inputs. In that sense, the proposed method is further explored to the extension called Secure Drag-and-Type for securing the password entry against shoulder-surfing and spyware attacks under the Drag-and- Type paradigm. In the user study, it was found that the proposed method could be used for secure and accurate password entry on the small touchscreen regarding the security-sensitive consumer electronics applications.