‘Quantitative Probabilistic Widgets’: Method to Improve Usability Performance of Data Entry Task

Abstract

This study focuses on data entry work done by operators working at Rural BPOs in India. It challenging to maintain the data quality while data entry. Therefore, to improve the data quality challenges, this paper introduces user interface involving data entry widgets based on quantitative probability. We hypothesize that, ‘quantitative probabilistic widgets’ improve performance of data entry. To prove this, we have conducted an experiment involving ninety five participants belonging to the age group of 18–30 years working in Rural BPOs of Maharashtra, a state situated at western side of India. The user interface was specially designed for this experiment. This interface uses different fields/widgets involving several specially designed widgets used during data entry. The task for experiment consists of transcription of given paper form into electronic form using both interfaces (existing and designed). The computer based background recording of each participant interaction with both user interfaces have taken for the calculation of accuracy and speed. There are significant differences in the speed of the entry and slight difference in error rate for two experimental conditions for the data entry. The results of this paper indicate that probabilistic approach can be used to design intelligent user interfaces for data entry which help to improve data quality.