This slightly unfortunately designed study compares the on-screen keyboard of the iPhone with QWERTY and Bell keypads. People with no iPhone experience were asked to use both their own hardkey-based phone and the iPhone, and the results were then compared.
“Participants made an average of 11 errors per message on the iPhone compared to an average of 3 errors per text message on their own phone. Although the error rate was alleviated somewhat by the iPhone’s self-correction feature, participants were still frustrated.”
Link: QWERTY Texters Demonstrated Drop in Efficiency When Texting on iPhone (usercentric.com)
Comments 1
“Slightly unfortunately designed” is pretty generous. Without a balanced level of experience with the two types of input, we can’t really draw any conclusions from the participants’ responses. I’m not even sure what the study was trying to prove, except that the iPhone’s interface isn’t easier than something users are already skilled at using… ? That’s not a reasonable expectation for any device.
Intuitively I would expect the iPhone’s text input to be more frustrating than a keyed input during the first few days, just from having played with it myself at the mac store. What would be interesting to me would be a comparison of users who are equally familiar with both types of devices. Personally I’m skeptical of the application of a touchscreen for text input, but I wouldn’t claim to know anything about it based on this study.
Posted 16 Aug 2007 at 5:48 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
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