Talking PhoneBook: Eyes-Free Communication Device

Video: Talking Phonebook: Eyes-Free Communication Device

1 Video: Talking Phonebook: Eyes-Free Communication Device

Device Used: T-Mobile G1 from HTC

Pressing the menu button while in the Talking Dialer togglesbetween dialing mode and phonebook.When in phonebook, you get eyes-free access to your contactswith the ability to quickly move to the contact that you wishto call.

When in the phonebook, you can scroll through your contacts and press the call button to callthe current contact. In addition, you can use stroke dialingas explained below to quickly move to a specific contact.

1.1 Entering Letters Using Stroke dialing

We covered eyes-free input with the touch screen in the earlier video on stroke dialing--- in that video, we illustrated the concept via a traditionalphone keypad. Here, we extend that techniqueto enable textual input. In the explanation below, we will use compass directions to helpwith orientation.As before, we will use relative positioning i.e., for the rest ofthis explanation, you can start anywhere on the touch-screen--- though we recommend (for reasons that will become evident)that you start somewhere close to the middle of the screen.

1.2 The Eight Compass Directions

Defining the center as where you first touch down on thescreen, notice that you can stroke in any one of the 8 compassdirections, and that opposite pairs of compass directions e.g.,North and South, can be thought of as opposites.So we get 4 pairs. We enumerate these below,associate them with the 4 Google colors, and equate themto their equivalent strokes from the stroke dialer:

• Red: North-West and South-east 1 and 9.
• Blue: North and South --- 2 and 8.
• Green: North-East and South-West --- 3 and 7.
• Yellow: East and West --- 4 and 6.

Now, let's place the letters of the alphabet on these 4 circlesas follows:

• Red: A ... H
• Blue: I ... P
• Green: Q ... X
• Yellow: Y ... Z.

To input a given letter, we stroke to the circle containing thedesired letter, trace along the circle till we hear the letter wewant, and lift up the finger to make the selection. Letters arespoken in a female voice while moving along the selected circle;lifting up the finger speaks the selected letter in a male voice.

Notice that conceptually, we have defined a fairly simple mappingfrom strokes to letters of the alphabet!

1.3 Skimming The Contact List

So to cut a long story short, you dont need to scroll throughthe contact list. To quickly jump to a contact, use the techniquedescribed above to input the first letter from the contact's name--- the aplication jumps to contacts starting with thatletter. At that point, you can either scroll, or enter additionalletters to further filter the contact list.

1.4 Examples Of Using Strokes For Letters

Notice from the mapping shown earlier that we can enter eachcircle either at the top or bottom. Thus, entering the redcircle at the top gets to A, while entering it at thebottom gets us to E. This means that the 8 letters on anygiven circle are no more than 3 steps away --- for example, toenter C, one needs to trace clockwise from A, orcounter-clockwise from E. As an example, H is only 1 stepfrom A on the red circle. similarly, P is only 1 step fromI on the blue circle.

Author: T.V Raman<raman@google.com>

Date: 2009-03-30 Mon

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