Peer-reviewed research
ResearchIME: A Mobile Keyboard Application for Studying Free Typing Behaviour in the Wild
Daniel Buschek et al., ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018), 2018 · DOI 10.1145/3173574.3173829
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- A 2018 CHI paper that presents ResearchIME, an Android keyboard that logs everyday typing in apps without storing readable text. A three-week field study of 30 people reports typing speed, hand postures, and how often people accepted word suggestions and automatic corrections.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed and rare for phone typing: the data come from people typing in their own apps, not a laboratory task. The sample is small (30 people), speed counts only single-character keystrokes, and the paper describes habits rather than testing causes.
Facts taken from this source
- In the field study, participants used 4.6 different typing postures on average, at least once each.
“On average, participants used 4.6 dif- ferent postures at least once.” (Hand Postures)
- Among the 16 people who used autocorrection in the field study, the median was 15.3 automatic corrections per person per day.
“Among its users (N=16), the median number per person/day was 15.3.” (Auto Correction)
- In a three-week field study of 30 people typing in their own apps, the mean typing speed was 32.1 words per minute.
“The mean speed was 32.1 WPM.” (Typing Speed)
- In the field study, people picked a word suggestion on average once every 63 keystrokes.
“Thus, people on average picked one suggestion every 63 keystrokes.” (Word Suggestions)
- In the field study, the participant who picked suggestions most often, once every 11 keystrokes, was also the slowest typist, at 15.6 words per minute.
“The user with the highest ratio had 9.4 %, picking a suggestion every 11 keystrokes. This was also the slowest typist (15.6 WPM).” (Word Suggestions)
- In the same field study, the most popular typing posture was two thumbs, at 74.5 percent of each person's typing.
“The most popular postures were two thumbs (74.5 %) and right thumb (12.7 %).” (Hand Postures)