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Universal Access in the Information Society
Published in: Universal Access in the Information Society 3/2014

01-08-2014 | Long paper

Mobile text-entry and visual demands: reusing and optimizing current solutions

Authors: Hugo Nicolau, Tiago Guerreiro, David Lucas, Joaquim Jorge

Published in: Universal Access in the Information Society | Issue 3/2014

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Abstract

Mobile devices are increasingly used for text-entry in contexts where visual attention is fragmented and graphical information is inadequate, yet the current solutions to typing on virtual keyboards make it a visually demanding task. This work looks at assistive technologies and interface attributes as tools to ease the task. Two within-subject experiments were performed with 23 and 17 participants, respectively. The first experiment aimed to understand how walking affected text-entry performance and additionally to assess how effective assistive technologies can be in mobile contexts. In the second experiment, adaptive keyboards featuring character prediction and pre-attentive attributes to ease visual demands of text-entry interfaces were developed and evaluated. It has been found that both text-input speed and overall quality are affected in mobile situations. Contrary to the expectations, assistive technologies proved ineffective with visual feedback. The second experiment showed that pre-attentive attributes do not affect users’ performance in task-entry tasks, even though a 3.3–4.3 % decrease in error rates was measured. It was found that users reduce walking speed to compensate for challenges placed by mobile text-entry. Caution should be exercised when transferring assistive technologies to mobile contexts, since they need adaptations to address mobile users’ needs. Also, while pre-attentive attributes seemingly have no effect on experienced QWERTY typists’ performance, they showed promise for both novice users and typists in attention-demanding contexts.
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Footnotes
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Metadata
Title
Mobile text-entry and visual demands: reusing and optimizing current solutions
Authors
Hugo Nicolau
Tiago Guerreiro
David Lucas
Joaquim Jorge
Publication date
01-08-2014
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Universal Access in the Information Society / Issue 3/2014
Print ISSN: 1615-5289
Electronic ISSN: 1615-5297
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-013-0319-y

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