A study by User Centric (here) is being widely reported on… Most (but not all) of the reports are saying that the study shows that the method for entering text into the iPhone is not as easy as for handsets with keys. Now, as much as I hate touch screens and think the iPhone will have a problem attracting people who can write text without looking at the screen (there’s quite a lot of them) the study itself doesn’t make those kinds of claims. As well it shouldn’t — the people testing the different input method came from being experienced users of their own handsets to a completely new interface so it was expected that they would be a lot slower with the iPhone. The study actually talked about the learning curve of using an iPhone — the people in the study only used the iPhone for half an hour. The other thing that the study talked about was the fact that the users failed to find the various features in the iPhone that make typing a message easier, such as the predictive/corrective bubbles. Being fair, you would expect someone who actually bought an iPhone to flip to the “how to input text” part of the manual.
The other thing that got my goat was something that pops up in a lot of studies, in the mainstream media and often mobile or tech sites, exemplified by the following line: “Those who owned a numeric keypad used the “multitap” method of entering text messages rather than predictive text.” WHY WAS THIS? Who still uses multitap? It’s possible that User Centric scoured the United States looking for people who write lots of messages but nevertheless still use multitap, but the subject comes up far too often for me to think that it isn’t common for people to use it. Whoever is reading this that uses multitap, do yourself a favor: Find a kid with (roughly) the same make of handset as you and ask them to teach you how to use predictive text. It will take you five minutes to learn and means you only have to press a button once to get a letter, at the most.
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