How do people type on mobile devices? Observations from a study with 37,000 volunteers

© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery. This paper presents a large-scale dataset on mobile text entry collected via a web-based transcription task performed by 37,370 volunteers. The average typing speed was 36.2 WPM with 2.3% uncorrected errors. The scale of the data enables powerful statistical analyses on the correlation between typing performance and various factors, such as demographics, finger usage, and use of intelligent text entry techniques. We report effects of age and finger usage on performance that correspond to previous studies. We also find evidence of relationships between performance and use of intelligent text entry techniques: auto-correct usage correlates positively with entry rates, whereas word prediction usage has a negative correlation. To aid further work on modeling, machine learning and design improvements in mobile text entry, we make the code and dataset openly available

A glimpse of mobile text entry errors and corrective behaviour in the wild

Research in mobile text entry has long focused on speed and input errors during lab studies. However, little is known about how input errors emerge in real-world situations or how users deal with these. We present findings from an in-the-wild study of everyday text entry and discuss their implications for future studies

Mobile text entry behaviour in lab and in-the-wild studies : is it different?

Text entry in smartphones remains a critical element of mobile HCI. It has been widely studied in lab settings, using primarily transcription tasks, and to a far lesser extent through in-the-wild (field) experiments. So far it remains unknown how well user behaviour during lab transcription tasks approximates real use. In this paper, we present a study that provides evidence that lab text entry behaviour is clearly distinguishable from real world use. Using machine learning techniques, we show that it is possible to accurately identify the type of study in which text entry sessions took place. The implications of our findings relate to the design of future studies in text entry, aiming to support input with virtual smartphone keyboards

Typing Efficiency and Suggestion Accuracy Influence the Benefits and Adoption of Word Suggestions

International audienceSuggesting words to complete a given sequence of characters isa common feature of typing interfaces. Yet, previous studies havenot found a clear benefit, some even finding it detrimental. Wereport on the first study to control for two important factors, wordsuggestion accuracy and typing efficiency. Our accuracy factor isenabled by a new methodology that builds on standard metrics ofword suggestions. Typing efficiency is based on device type. Resultsshow word suggestions are used less often in a desktop condition,with little difference between tablet and phone conditions. Veryaccurate suggestions do not improve entry speed on desktop, but doon tablet and phone. Based on our findings, we discuss implicationsfor the design of automation features in typing systems

Understanding Mode and Modality Transfer in Unistroke Gesture Input

Unistroke gestures are an attractive input method with an extensive research history, but one challenge with their usage is that the gestures are not always self-revealing. To obtain expertise with these gestures, interaction designers often deploy a guided novice mode -- where users can rely on recognizing visual UI elements to perform a gestural command. Once a user knows the gesture and associated command, they can perform it without guidance; thus, relying on recall. The primary aim of my thesis is to obtain a comprehensive understanding of why, when, and how users transfer from guided modes or modalities to potentially more efficient, or novel, methods of interaction -- through symbolic-abstract unistroke gestures. The goal of my work is to not only study user behaviour from novice to more efficient interaction mechanisms, but also to expand upon the concept of intermodal transfer to different contexts. We garner this understanding by empirically evaluating three different use cases of mode and/or modality transitions. Leveraging marking menus, the first piece investigates whether or not designers should force expertise transfer by penalizing use of the guided mode, in an effort to encourage use of the recall mode. Second, we investigate how well users can transfer skills between modalities, particularly when it is impractical to present guidance in the target or recall modality. Lastly, we assess how well users' pre-existing spatial knowledge of an input method (the QWERTY keyboard layout), transfers to performance in a new modality. Applying lessons from these three assessments, we segment intermodal transfer into three possible characterizations -- beyond the traditional novice to expert contextualization. This is followed by a series of implications and potential areas of future exploration spawning from our work

A Human Factors analysis of Firefighter injury sustained during emergency response operations:Implications for error management and injury reduction in English Fire and Rescue Services.

This research is concerned with the human factors that may contribute to firefighter injury and whether the Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) adequately acknowledges their influence when investigating, recording, analysing, or reporting accident causation. In particular, the extent to which, as critical decision makers, firefighters experience the deficit outcome of their own risk-v-benefit decisions when operating without the immediate oversight of a supervisor or commander. Studies of judgement and decision making specifically focused on the role of firefighter as opposed to their incident commanders are exceptional.For the first time in the analysis of firefighter injury, a number of variables that represent the preconditions of accident causation such as the demographic, temporal, environmental and contextual characteristics were analysed. An ‘error typing’ taxonomy that differentiates between decision errors, skill-based errors, perception errors and violations was used to examine the extent to which human factors are being considered by FRSs in the analysis of firefighter injury. Opportunity was also taken to examine the applicability of the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) (Weigmann and Shappell 2003), to the emergency response domain of the FRS. This revealed the value of developing a valid and reliable sector specific variant of HFACS (UKFire-HFACS). Finally, using the critical decision method, recollection of the contextual characteristics that influenced the judgements, decisions, and actions at the ‘moment-of-choice’ of injured firefighters was also explored. Three studies that when combined establish components of a Human Factors Analysis Framework (HFAF) for the FRS.It was established that when implementing the requirements of an incident commander’s tactical plan, firefighters are required to make critical decisions and at times experience injury when operating without the immediate oversight of a supervisor or commander. Analysis demonstrated how the majority of injuries involve either a decision based or skill-based error which substantiates the existence and influence of skill fade at the ‘moment-of-choice’. It also brings FRS arrangements for the maintenance of competence into focus and worthy of closer scientific scrutiny. It is also evident that the approach of this research using three studies can be developed into a human factors analysis framework for the FRS. In turn this can establish the means by which the deficit outcome of firefighter critical decision making can be better understood, enable targeted intervention, and over time, reduce reported operational injury

Co-ordination and Lock-in: Competition with Switching Costs and Network Effects

Switching costs and network effects bind customers to vendors if products are incompatible, locking customers or even markets in to early choices. Lock-in hinders customers from changing suppliers in response to (predictable or unpredictable) changes in effciency, and gives vendors lucrative ex post market power-over the same buyer in the case of switching costs (or brand loyalty), or over others with network effects. Firms compete ex ante for this ex post power, using penetration pricing, introductory offers, and price wars. Such "competition for the market" or "life-cycle competition" can adequately replace ordinary compatible competition, and can even be fiercer than compatible competition by weakening differentiation. More often, however, incompatible competition not only involves direct effciency losses but also softens competition and magnifies incumbency advantages. With network effects, established firms have little incentive to offer better deals when buyers’ and complementors’ expectations hinge on non-effciency factors (especially history such as past market shares), and although competition between incompatible networks is initially unstable and sensitive to competitive offers and random events, it later "tips" to monopoly, after which entry is hard, often even too hard given incompatibility. And while switching costs can encourage small-scale entry, they discourage sellers from raiding one another’s existing customers, and s also discourage more aggressive entry. Because of these competitive effects, even ineffcient incompatible competition is often more profitable than compatible competition, especially for dominant rms with installed-base or expectational advantages. Thus firms probably seek incompatibility too often. We therefore favor thoughtfully pro-compatibility public policy.

The role of effort in security and privacy behaviours online

As more and more aspects of users’ lives go online, they can interact with each other, access services and purchase goods with unprecedented convenience and speed. However, this also means that users’ devices and data become more vulnerable to attacks. As security is often added to tools and services as an after-thought, it tends to be poorly integrated into the processes and part of the effort of securing is often offloaded onto the user. Users are goal-driven and they go online to get things done, protecting their security and privacy might therefore not be a priority. The six studies described in this dissertation examine the role of effort in users’ security and privacy behaviours online. First, two security studies use authentication diaries to examine the user effort required for authentication to organisational and online banking systems respectively. Second, two further studies are laboratory evaluations of proposed mechanisms for authentication and verification. Third, two privacy studies examine the role of effort in users’ information disclosure in webforms and evaluate a possible solution that could help users manage how much they disclose. All studies illustrate the different coping strategies users develop to manage their effort. They show that demanding too much effort can affect productivity, cause frustration and undermine the security these mechanisms were meant to offer. The work stresses the importance of conducting methodologically robust user evaluations of both proposed and deployed mechanisms in order to improve user satisfaction and their security and privacy

Risk management by trainee translators: a study of translation procedures and justifications in peer-group interaction

The thesis deals with the way student groups translate when simulating interactions between translators and clients, using risk management concepts as tools for describing their decisions. The research aims are: 1) to explore how the use of peer-group interaction in a simulated setting affects students’ ways of managing risk while translating, and 2) to study whether translators have any identifiable pattern of behavior of risk management and effort distribution. A two-cycle experiment involving two roles, the translator and the simulated client, was carried out with a class of translation students to test the effects of the main variable of peer-group interaction. Performance data were collected with screen recordings and think-aloud protocols. Additional data are collected through pre-and-post-experiment questionnaires and interviews with student subjects. The research analyzes of the translators’ rendition processes, codes the problems they face, observe the translation procedures they consider and finally adopt, and looks into the justifications for their procedures, in order to interpret their risk management.La presente investigación analiza cómo los estudiantes de traducción gestionan el riesgo mientras traducen en un entorno simulado en el que se representa la relación traductor-cliente. Los objetivos de la investigación son: 1) analizar cómo la interacción de grupo de pares en un entorno simulado altera la forma en que los estudiantes gestionan el riesgo durante la traducción, y 2) averiguar si los traductores individuales tienen un patrón de comportamiento identificable en lo que respecta a la gestión de riesgo y a la distribución del esfuerzo. Se realizó un experimento de dos ciclos que incluyó dos roles (el traductor y el cliente simulado) con un grupo de estudiantes de traducción para evaluar los efectos de la interacción en un grupo de pares. Se recolectaron datos adicionales por medio de cuestionarios previos y posteriores al experimento, así como también por medio de entrevistas con los sujetos. Con el fin de interpretar su gestión del riesgo, la investigación analiza los procesos de traducción de los traductores, clasifica los problemas que enfrentaron, considera los procedimientos de traducción que tuvieron en cuenta y los que, finalmente, decidieron usar, y busca la razón por la que usaron dichos procedimientos