Design and evaluation of innovative chord input for mobile phones

Abstract

Text message is one of the most popular functions of mobile phones, apart from talking through the phone. This study focuses on how chord input is being used on mobile phones, as well as operating phones with chord input. We propose two new mobile phones: Tri-joint key and Four-corner key, which combines with the chord input and the natural finger localization. There were 14 male participants and 6 female participants that participated in this research; after 9 days of practice with the content of numerals, English characters and English phrases. The result shows the performances of the participants have increased, including the speed of completing tasks and accuracy. There is no significant difference between these two new styles of phones and the ordinary type concerning the user satisfaction chart. This also means users could accept new kinds of input devices. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.