BanditTyper
An app to help users with a limited range of motion get the best typing experience!
Get StartedIntroduction and Motivation
We wanted to help users navigate the situational inaccessibility that arises when a user has a limited range of motion that usual. For instance, when you can only type with one hand -- ie. when cooking or when one hand is wearing a sock puppet of colossal importance. These situations would change the user's range of motion to favor keys nearer to the center of the keyboard over peripheral keys.
Development Process
What to solve and why?
March 31
- We decided our target domain and context, as well as problem statement.
- Our first idea was a migraine filter extension but we switched it since we felt that the keyboard would feel more tactile and interactive.
- Afterwards we expanded on our target product with research on current design/state-of-the-art research.
Product prototype (1st iteration)
April 14
- We created our initial low-fi mockup and user scenario (storyboard) on Figma.
- We also ran our needfinding study, documenting our study process, and compiling result & analysis
- See the results of our needfinding study in the 'User Evaluation Results' section below.
Presentation
April 22
- We created a presentation and demo video for our project, presenting it to a group of our peers.
- From there we also recieved feedback on our project and made changes accordingly.
- See our presentation below in the 'Presentation & Demo' section!
Preliminary user evaluation for iteration (2nd iteration)
April 28
- We created a high-fidelity prototype using Next.js (React and TypeScript) and Tailwind CSS, deployed on Vercel.
- Each person created a different portion of the prototype, which we combined them together, see more about who did what below!
- Afterwards, we had a user evaluation on the prototype, and you can see our method and results below.
Project Website
May 5
- We compiled the final results of the project and created this website to showcase our work!
March 31
April 14
April 22
April 28
May 5
Individual Contributions
Victoria Chen
- User study design and execution
- Input page development
- Start page design on Figma
- Acted and edited the demo video
- Presentation
Check it out in action!
Presentation & Demo
Demo Video
Check it out here!User Evaluation Results
"The UI looks really good!"
"Was initially skeptical, but seems interesting and potentially useful. I'd definitely try it out!"
"Bandit typer is really important since we rely so heavily on technology and typing, and mobility issues devastate someone's ability to type."
We conducted a user evaluation with 5 users who have a limited range of motion to see if there was a need for our product. What we found was that there was a significant (63%) decrease in typing speed when users were had to type with one hand. After presenting our prototype, users could immediately see how BanditTyper could be a useful tool for them.
The biggest point of feedback that we recieved after our presentation was that there may be a large learning curve for users who use muscle memory to type. After careful consideration of this feedback, we still believe our product can bring value to users who have a limited range of motion for the following reasons:
- 50% of typists are not touch typists, so they would not have to relearn muscle memory.
- In situations where a user's range of motion is often limited (ie. they regularly do tasks that limit their range of motion), the benefit of a new layout would outweigh the costs.
- BanditTyper can also generate keyboard layouts for mobile, where many users also don't touch type.
Conclusion and Future Work
We hope that BanditTyper can be a useful tool for users who need to type with one hand. In the future, we hope to add more languages, a more advanced algorithm for assigning keys that takes into account the distance to reach keys and what characters are used frequently with each other.