Text Faster And Play Easier On Your Smartwatch with WatchMI

You could never go back to your classic watch after you got in touch with a smart one. Having your emails in the palm of your hand and taking calls while working out? Heaven! The only problem is the display – too small, even for your piano fingers. Fortunately, there may be a way to interact better with all your digital content, without changing your watch #objectmagic

Computer scientists at the University of St Andrews developed WatchMI, a system that allows you to use all the touch sensitive surface of the watch, not just the one unobstructed by your fingers. This can happen because the system is more interested in the way you use gestures in conjuncture with the technology at your wrist, not just touch.

By using the inbuilt sensors most smartwatches have (accelerometer and gyroscope), WatchMI can take advantage of a simple twist for volume control or a left/right panning to scroll between different menus. In the same way, a game can be played easier and faster by using twist to control a character.

Texting, one activity that occupies 23 hours/week from an adult’s life in America,  can be made easier over the night, by replacing multiple taps for character selection with pressure; and this is just the beginning.

As Hui-Shyong Yeo, postgraduate researcher in the School of Computer Science at the University, put it, “[…]this could transform the way smartwatches are viewed and used because our technique could be applied to most of the smartwatches and fitness trackers in the market without adding to the cost.”