Alphanumeric entry on pen-based computers

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to compare several methods of numeric and text entry for pen-based computers. For numeric entry, the conditions were hand printing, tapping on a soft keypad, stroking a moving pie menu, and stroking a pie pad. For the pie conditions, strokes are made in the direction that numbers appear on a clock face. For the moving pie menu, strokes were made directly in the application, as with hand printing. For the pie pad, strokes were made on top of one another on a separate pie pad, with the results sent to the application. Based on speed and accuracy, the entry methods from best to worst were soft keypad (30 wpm, 1.2% errors), hand printing (18.5 wpm, 10.4% errors), pie pad (15.1 wpm, 14.6% errors), and moving pie menu (12.4 wpm, 16.4% errors).For text entry, the conditions were hand printing, tapping on a soft keyboard with a QWERTY layout, and tapping on a soft keyboard with an ABC layout (two rows of sequential characters). Tapping on the soft QWERTY keyboard was the quickest (23 wpm) and most accurate (1.1% errors) entry method. Hand printing was slower (16 wpm) and more error prone (8.1% errors). Tapping on the soft ABC keyboard was very accurate (0.6% errors) but was slower (13 wpm) than the other methods.These results represent the first empirical tests of entry speed and accuracy using a stylus to tap on a soft keyboard. Although handwriting (with recognition) is touted as the entry method of choice for pen-based computers, the much simpler technique of tapping on a soft keyboard is faster and more accurate.