Mobile Text Entry: Methods and Evaluation CSCI 4800 March 31, 2005

Mobile Text Entry The problem Approaches T9 Fastap Other … Evaluation How it was performed? Results Discussion and analysis

Key-Based Methods Telephone Keypad  Multi-press method  Two-Key  T9 text entry method  LetterWise Fastap

The Fastap interface. Standard 12 key Telephone keypad

Stylus-Based Methods  Handwriting Recognition  Stroke Alphabets  Gesture-Based Text Entry

Cirrin

Dependent Measures Text entry speed is characters per second (CPS), which is calculated as: CPS=Cn/Tc Words per min (WPM)=CPS*60/Wc A metric for measuring the overhead involved in correcting errors is keystrokes per character (KSPC) KSPC=Kn/Cn Ratio Kn/Kmin when KSPC>1

Evaluation Phase Participant Details:  34 participants took part  Filled questionnaires detailing their experience with text messaging  4 categories were made i.e. beginner (zero messages a week), novice (> 5 msg. a week), intermediate (5 to 15 msg. a week) and expert (> 15 msg. a week).

Evaluation  30 mins session over a 2 week period  Participants were asked to correct any errors and complete the task.  Fill out a NASA TLX worksheet. (Six categories: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, effort, performance and frustration level)  Each participant received different order of test sentences from each category

Interfaces  Nokia ( T9 method)  Ericsson T10s3 (Multi-press with timeout of 2 seconds)  Fastap prototypes ( with only text entry functionality)

Test Sentences  24 sentences were created in each of the 4 sentence categories.  The traditional sentences contained only lower case letters and dictionary words.  Non-dictionary sentences  Abbreviated sentences  Numeric sentences

EvaluationPhase Initial Reaction Novice evaluation Expert evaluation Evaluations was based on questionnaires Mean entry rates and Error rates

Initial Reaction Results  30 of the 34 participants completed the task within the time limit.  mean entry speed across all participants interfaces and also per Interface.  First Task: T9 interface was the fastest  Second Task: Fastap interface was fastest  Multi-press interface performed poorly in both tasks

Summary of Mean entry rates and SD  Fastap (1.705), (2.255)  Multi-press ( 1.307), (0.96)  T (6.699),3.641 (2.582)

Error Rates  Fastap interface had the lowest mean keystrokes per character for the 1 st task followed by multi-press (1.51) and T9 (2.34).  Fastap interface had the lowest mean keystrokes per character for the 2 nd task followed by T9 (2.82) and multi- press (7.20).

Comparison of Usability The average text entry rate for the T9 interface, illustrate the potentially fast entry speeds can be achieved with the interface, by expert users. The Usability of Interface was very poor. The second initial reaction task proved easier for the participants using T9, with most being able to complete the task, though with varying levels of efficiency. The multi-press interface performed poorly in both tasks, especially the second initial reaction task. Numerical entry was the most difficult. For the first initial reaction task the multi-press was more usable than T9, as all participants were able to complete the task fairly efficiently. The Fastap interface provided the best immediate usability during the initial reactions tasks, with all participants being able to complete both tasks. Second initial reaction, Participants indicated that number buttons were hard to press, having tried to press them directly rather than chording the four upper- layer buttons surrounding them. This does not seem to have a significant effect on their performance.

Novice Performance

Novice Performance The mean entry rates

Error Rates The Fastap interface had the lowest mean keystrokes per character value (1.09), followed by T9 (1.79) and multi- press (2.07).

The NASA TLX ratings

Expert Performance

Mean entry rates

The NASA TLX ratings for the Expert Evaluations task

Evaluation Summary

Multi-press  Provided quite good immediate usability, though it performed poorly when entering numbers.  Received low ratings on the subjective response measures with participants being less than satisfied with its performance  Performance gains could not be achieved with further training because of the basic inefficiencies of the method

T9  Displayed very poor immediate usability  Training period improved T9’s performance  Performed extremely well with the traditional, numeric sentences and with the non- dictionary sentences  Tended to be most error-prone when entering non-dictionary and abbreviated sentences which often required mode switches.

Fastap  Potential to provide high entry rates for expert users  Errors were caused by the small size of the letter buttons.  Performed well with all 4 sentence types.  It recorder the lowest error rates