At the last Mobile HCI 2013 in Munich, a short paper by students from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Pennsylvania State University on "SpeechTouch: Precise Cursor Positioning on Touch Screen Mobiles" was presented.
Solution to fat finger problem
The short paper prepared by the students dealt with a solution to the "fat finger problem" in the operation of touchscreens when it comes to reading or editing e-mails or notes. In this case, the finger covers the objects on the display of touchscreen cell phones or other mobile devices in front of which the cursor is to be positioned for further interactions.
This often leads to input errors. With SpeechTouch, the students have developed a multimodal method that improves the accuracy of one-touch cursor positioning. This simply combines the imprecise touch input and the simple voice input. The user touches the word in which he wants to position the cursor with his finger and at the same time pronounces aloud the letter in front of which the cursor is positioned. Experiments by the students have shown that this method works well and can be applied.
