Natural Sections in Product Design

Abstract

This paper reviews a number of different text input methods on smartphones and proposes how smartphone typing methods may inhibit user interaction rather than enhance it. It explores design and ergonomic considerations underpinning the use of six commonly used smartphone text input methods in order to determine and compare their usability. Furthermore, it discusses the results from testing smartphone users to assess which method is considered most efficient. It concludes that alternative input methods such as Swype and SwiftKey offer substantial benefits to users and are comparable with common typing speeds found on computer keyboards. Biographical notes: Tom Page mainly teaches electronic product design and has been working between the fields of interaction, physical computing and electronic product design for the last couple of years. His main interests lie in the area of technology mediated learning, value management and electronic product design. He has been a consultant for many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and large-scale manufacturing and service enterprises in the UK, in engineering design and electronic product design. His work has been widely published in the form of journal papers, book contributions, refereed proceedings, refereed conference papers and technical papers.