Phrase sets for evaluating text entry techniques

ABSTRACT

In evaluations of text entry methods, participants enter phrases of text using a technique of interest while performance data are collected. This paper describes and publishes (via the internet) a collection of 500 phrases for such evaluations. Utility programs are also provided to compute statistical properties of the phrase set, or any other phrase set. The merits of using a pre-defined phrase set are described as are methodological considerations, such as attaining results that are generalizable and the possible addition of punctuation and other characters.

REFERENCES

• 1: Scott MacKenzie, Mobile text entry using three keys, Proceedings of the second Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction, October 19-23, 2002, Aarhus, Denmark [doi>10.1145/572020.572025]
• 2: I. Scott MacKenzie , Hedy Kober , Derek Smith , Terry Jones , Eugene Skepner, LetterWise: prefix-based disambiguation for mobile text input, Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, November 11-14, 2001, Orlando, Florida [doi>10.1145/502348.502365]
• 3: I. Scott MacKenzie , Shawn X. Zhang, The design and evaluation of a high-performance soft keyboard, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.25-31, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.302983]
• 4: Mayzner, M. S., and Tresselt, M. E. Table of single-letter and digram frequency counts for various word-length and letter-position combinations, Psychonomic Monograph Supplements 1 (1965), 13--32.
• 5: R. William Soukoreff , I. Scott MacKenzie, Metrics for text entry research: an evaluation of MSD and KSPC, and a new unified error metric, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642632]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Input devices and strategies (e.g., mouse, touchscreen)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Standardization; Interaction styles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, direct manipulation)

Keywords:
hand held devices and mobile computing, input and interaction technologies, pen and tactile input