wtim 2011 - Workshop on Advances in Text Input Methods

Methods of text input have entered a new era. The number of people who have access to computers and mobile devices is skyrocketing in regions where people cannot type their native language characters directly. It has also become commonplace to input text not through a keyboard but through different modes such as voice and handwriting recognition. Even when people type with a keyboard, it is done differently from a few years ago - adaptive software keyboards, word prediction and spell correction are just a few examples of such recent changes in text input experience. The changes are now global and ubiquitous: users are no longer willing to input text without the help of new generation input methods regardless of language, device or situation.

The challenges in text input have many underlying NLP problems in common. For example, a high quality dictionary is called for, but it is far from obvious how to construct and maintain one. A dictionary also needs to be stored in some data structure, whose optimal design may depend upon the usage. Prediction and spell correction can be very annoying if they are not smart enough. For many applications, user input can be very noisy (imagine voice recognition or typing on a small screen), so the input methods must be robust against such noise. Finally, there is no standard data set or evaluation metric, which is necessary for quantitative analysis of user input experience.

The goal of this workshop is bring together the researchers and developers of text input technologies around the world, and share their innovations, research findings and issues across different applications, devices, modes and languages. We hope that the workshop will deepen our understanding of the field as a whole, and facilitate further innovation in each application area.
We welcome participation on a wide range of topics and languages covering the text input. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
Phonetic input for the languages of the world: transliteration-based approach to non- Roman script languages
Input for soft keyboards and devices with hardware limitations: input systems for phones, game devices, tablet PCs
Investigations in new input modes: text input via speech, handwriting and/or gesture
Predictive input technologies: auto-completion and next word prediction for IME; spell correction
User feedback and community-specific data: understanding the user and usage for a better input experience
Models: research and practice of statistical input methods
Evaluation: aspects of measuring user experience in text input
Issues in commercial input engine deployment: data compression, cloud-based IME, user interface design