A research on typing methods for interactive Digital Television Applications

It has been several years now since we started to experience a change in traditional television services. Recently, the digitalization of these services has improved the usage of the available electromagnetic spectrum, increased the quality of the service and increased the number of channels. The next step in this evolution is the transformation of traditional television into a fully interactive service. This change allows users to run applications on the television, similar to those of mobile phones or computers. Nevertheless, the main interaction device delivered with televisions and set-top-boxes is still the traditional remote control. This device is suitable to perform certain actions such as move a pointer or select something, but it has not been designed to carry out more complex actions such as writing text. In this paper we present the main outcomes of a project aimed at researching typing methods for interactive digital television services. During the project we have carried out several experiments with real users, who had to use different typing methods and devices that may be suitable for interactive digital television applications.