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iPhone Keyboard Leads to Typso
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:40 AM
from the see-get-it-i-was-being-funny dept.
from the see-get-it-i-was-being-funny dept.
jfruhlinger writes "One of the selling points of the iPhone was its revolutionary touch-screen full keyboard. But a study has shown that text messages sent from iPhones contain significantly more typso than messages from phones with other kinds of keyboards — and aren't entered any faster."
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Typso (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Typso (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Typso (Score:5, Funny)
iThere iis, ibut iit iputs ian i"i" iin ifront iof ieach iword. iIt's ipretty uficking iannoying.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Is that a uTypo or an iTypo?
Re:Typso (Score:5, Funny)
I've read of langusage that do plursal this way, but I've never studied any. Maybe some lingusist should find the author's (authos'r?) language community and do some field studsy on its membser.
Parent
There's no blame for SENDING more errors (Score:4, Interesting)
Second, the sample size was too small.
Third, so what if you make mistakes? Even more mistakes. Anyone who would type a message that matters and just hit "Send" as soon as they were done is an idiot. You go back, read, and correct an important message. And for my money, a click-to-correct algorithm is better than a cursor-to-correct one. So if you actually measured SENT message errors, perhaps the iPhone would score much better.
Fourth, your "experienced" users are how experienced? Do they slow down and take advantage of the visual keyboard feedback on arbitrary text? (Plus the fact that a keystroke registers on key release, not press?) And are they experienced at sending SMS, but you asked them to send a two-paragraph email? Or perhaps vice-versa?
Bah, probably shills for a competing phone technology.
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Obligatory link (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory link (Score:5, Funny)
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I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I've been seeing typing like this appear in blogs recently. Apparently, a certain cellphone-enabled generation is learning that this type of spelling is acceptable. It is not any one cellphone's fault, and it's not the interface's fault either. Guess who is responsible for teaching our children how to spell?
Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Interesting)
It seemed to start growing quickly out of AOL customers starting circa '94-'95, and sadly hasn't slowed down.
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Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Insightful)
-or and -our have quite different pronunciations, and the way we pronounce color over here, sounds nothing like colour. It has nothing to do with being lazy. This difference is more like cockney (sp?) vs. standard British English.
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Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, I'd wager that within 150 years elite will be an archaic spelling of the more common and perfectly correct spelling: leet.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the swapping of numbers will probably never become official, nor will the intentional misspellings that really don't result in a pronunciation near what they are supposed to spell.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
(Okay, kidding about the last 3)
Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Being Canadian I have a fondness for British spellings of words over American (in most cases), but the elitest attitude towards American spelling found in most English speaking countries only shows an ignorance to the history of the English language. During the 18th century and earlier, there was no such thing as a correct spelling, and many words had multiple recognized spellings. Attempts to standardize spellings began only a few decades before the US declared independence, and were not truly complete till well after. Contrary to popular belief American spellings were not dreamed up out of thin air, but were spellings that had been considered correct for centuries. Yes, American spellings were picked precisely because they were not the ones being made standard in Britian, but my point remains that Americans did not invent said spellings and don't deseve all the critism they get for them.
Parent
Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently you missed the part of the study that says that messages sent from iPhones have more errors than messages sent from other phones. So while there may be more tolerance for bad spelling in our society, that has nothing to do with the observation that iPhones lead to more typos.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that you're going to have more errors with an interface with no tactile response. The Atari 400 was a decent computer back in the early 80's but was generally scoffed at because of its mesh-type keyboard that offered very little tactile response and made touch typing very difficult. The iPhone is the same, but worse, because there is no tactile response.
I have a hard time believing I ever would get a phone that has no tactile buttons. I have a Treo and while I can dial phone numbers by tapping the screen and can use a virtual keyboard that would require me typing on the touchscreen, I almost always use the tactile keys instead. With the iPhone, that wouldn't be an option.
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Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Interesting)
-Vishal
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Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:5, Insightful)
With only 20 people in the entire sample group, we are looking at a very small number of people in the novice vs. experienced study.
I love my iPhone's keyboard. Though I admit that it took time to become accustomed to its use, I now find that I am much faster on the iPhone than on other devices. I think one element of the speed is getting to the point where you accept typos because you know that the iPhone's spell-checker will automatically fix the errors.
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Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm shocked.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
See you later (13 letters)
CU L8R (5 letters)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
CU Next Tuesday
Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:4, Informative)
Time for an Internet meme (source unconfirmed):
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Parent
Re:I hate the l337 txt culture (Score:4, Interesting)
"Wo creas as lnog sa u cna raed it?"
vs
hu kars so lng as u cn reed it?
Interesting. The former is made of typos I might make (and have, though not at once
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg16221887.600 [newscientist.com]
See also this cached page [216.239.59.104] which also has an interesting discussion of the effect in other languages; it works in French and Spanish, but not in Finnish or Hebrew. Interestingly, I could recognise the language of most of the scrambled samples, and even read much of the French and Spanish without difficulty, and I'm by no means fluent in either.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But it's also important to note two things:
1. The iPhone hasn't been around that long, it will take time for users to become acclimated
2. The iPhone may be used by a lot of people that care less about typos in their texts.
So before one can say this study shows that the UI for the iPhone is flawed, it's important to normalize the results for both 1 and 2.
Try the study again in 2 years, among people who have been texting on their phone of choice for >2 years who represent similar cross-se
But does it include that the spell checker fixes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But does it include that the spell checker fixe (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if they are dealing with the iPhone knockoffs that are running windows mobile?
Re:But does it include that the spell checker fixe (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
not suprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not suprising (Score:4, Insightful)
I've tried the qwerty keyboards on a Nokia E61 and an iPod Touch. The iPod Touch keyboard is far superior, in my opinion. The E61 keys are lined up in a grid and not like a real qwerty keyboard, they're smaller and closer together and they have to be pushed quite hard for them to register (in comparison, the iPod Touch only requires the lightest touch). It's also difficult to see at a glance which key is which, because it's cluttered up with symbols and numbers (as you can't switch keyboards like you can on the iPod Touch).
For business emails, I'd expect the sender to proof-read before hitting send, no matter what type of keyboard they used.
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Re:not suprising (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's an important business e-mail, you should be proofreading it anyway. No interface is immune to typos, and even with a spell-check, you can still get the wrong word. Like "it's" and "its", "their" and "there", or "whole" and "hole".
If you don't proofread important documents and communications, then you're going to look like a moron. The input device doesn't matter.
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Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The little article I saw about this said they measured people for a month with three keyboards: QWERTY (i.e. blackberry), numeric (i.e. RAZR), and iPhone. They said the iPhone people typed faster, but had more errors.
I wonder if this was fair. The people they found had no experience with the iPhone I'm guessing. But had they used the other two before? Or were these people who never did any kind of text messaging before on the other kinds of phones, or had they used them just a little? That could make a difference.
Does anyone know? This article doesn't seem to mention this either.
I don't own an iPhone, I've only touched one a handful of times.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for that, I hadn't caught it. But people could only be used to the iPhone for 2-3 months at this point. You could have been using a QWERTY or numeric phone keypad for text entry for years. So it's still possible that it's not a fair comparison. I'd just like to know more before I believe it better. If this was done a year from now I'd be more apt to believe it... but the iPhone is just so new compared to the other solutions.
You've used a QWERTY keyboard. You've used a calculator. Combine the two and
no tactile feedback? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is considered a typo? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also I believe the iPhone learns how you type as you use it more and will even start correcting to incorrect words if you force them often enough. Were these people using clean install iPhones? If so that would contribute to it. If the people who were trying them out that were accustomed to the normal phones were using the same iPhones it would be using the other persons mistakes to make corrections which would lead to possibly more mistakes.
In all honesty though... just look at your message before you send it?
User-Base and Laziness? (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet if the same type of study was done with Sidekick users, we'd see a higher error rate as well.
I'm not saying that the phone interface doesn't have anything to do with it. I would never buy one as it doesn't have a keyboard. I simply think the user-base needs to be taken into consideration.
FTA: "iPhone owners also left an average of 2.6 errors/completed message created on the iPhone compared to an average of 0.8 errors/completed message left by hard-key QWERTY phone owners on their own phone."
So is user-laziness a factor here as well? It says that the user "left" errors in the message. I make errors in typing all the time, but I usually correct them. Why not conduct a study to see what the error-rate is without letting the users make corrections. That would be the best way to see just how accurate initial text input was.
It's not supposed to be optimized for typing. (Score:5, Insightful)
In spite of it's shortcomings, it is still more than sufficient for typing search keywords, web urls, quick messages and replies, but if you are a mobile email addict and actually send lots of email, you are probably better off with a blackberry.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
touch-typing works because you can feel where your hands are over the keyboard. You can feel when a key has been pressed. Without that tactile feedback, you cannot touch type, and (surprise!) you wont be able to improve your typing speed/accuracy. (You will always be hunting and pecking on the iPhone.)
The apple people knew that, and they made a conscious decision to sacrifice typing speed for screen real-estate.
Seems to have paid off.
Not a new problem at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Laptops are the way they are, BIG, because they keyboard needs to be big. If you ever have been forced to use a small keyboard, or even one of those horrible flat ones without physical keys you will know why. Our fingers just ain't that accurate while typing. I can blind type fairly but my fingers still depend heavily on the shape of the keys to press the right one.
That is the reason keys on your keybaord are tapered like / \ that so that two keys next to each other /i\ /o\ have a large space between them so that if you slightly miss one you don't hit another.
Keys are also slightly curved inwards for even better guidance of your fingers. Work with a keyboard that doesn't have this and watch your accuracy drop.
This has always been a weakness with touchscreens. For display stands the keyboard is a necesarry evil, while you could do LOTS of intresting things with a touch screen as the input method, the simple fact is that if you want people to start typing, they want/need/expect a traditional keyboard with properly shaped and spaced keys. If people only have to make the most basic inputs, a touch screen will do, and can in many ways help avoid wrong inputs. (Experiment, Prompt the user to enter Y/N, and record what keys they actually press. WARNING: you will loose all fate in humanity when you see the results. Intresting side note, once had a display that at one point asked the user to touch the screen to continue. Should have known better then to use this for a display at a household show. The women touched the screen alright, the sides, the top, the bottom, everything BUT the screen. Granted this was some time ago)
The iPhones touch screen is in many ways totally crap, no tactile feedback on where your fingers are (no homekeys), no tactile feedback on a keypress/release. Way too closely spaced. The "advantage" it has is that physical keyboards at that size are little better, and very prone to breaking.
Why do you think over all these years we still have keyboards with physical keys that are still the same shape as they were on typewriters from before the war? They work.
Firmware upgrade idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they can include this feature on the next firmware upgrade: When the phone hears you utter an expletive, it will delete the last word for you. Not only can we continue to propagate bad cellphone etiquette, but also enhance it with people regularly cursing at their phones in public places while texting.
<grin>
Parent
Re:Sexy technology Business Sense (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but my IPhone has gotten me laid, can you say that about your blackberry?
I'm sure that blackberries can also be used to place calls to escort services.
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Reality distortion field at full power (Score:5, Insightful)
SteveJ's reality distortion field is still going strong. I don't think I've come across any product defect or design flaw in an Apple product that hasn't had at least one Apple apologist step up and blame the customer. I remember early colour Powerbooks (the 1st-gen PowerPC ones) that had a lot of problems with power cord connectors and battery charging and though most users complained and Apple even admitted fault and issued a recall, there were a number of Apple fans who derided users for misusing or abusing their precious Powerbooks. Later there were white MacBooks that started to discolour after a few weeks of regular use. It couldn't be that snow-white was an impractical choice for a laptop enclosure, or that the plastic or protective coatings were not of high quality--it was the fault of users with their sweaty grubby hands (never mind that the cheap and not-so-cheerful Dells went far longer before showing wear or discolouring).
Right from the days of the ZX81 and Atari 400 until today, it has been proven time and again that flat, non-tactile keyboard surfaces are inferior to keyboards/keypads with raised keys and tactile feedback when it comes to any sort of serious typing. This study regarding the iPhone's on-screen touch-keyboard is not the least bit surprising. Certainly it is no more surprising than an iEnthusiast complaining that users must evolve to accommodate their beloved Apple products.
If you use your mobile for a lot of text messaging the iPhone is an inferior product and you should get a Blackberry instead. That doesn't mean the iPhone isn't pretty or cool or useful for other things, but it is what it is. It isn't stupid user's fault for iPhone typos, it is the design of the iPhone itself. It isn't meant to be a "text message machine"--it merely offers something "good enough" to do the occasional text message when you need to.
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Re:What a crappy joke (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for the link, that answers a number of my questions.
Likewise, where do you get your figures? How large a majority of the people who own iPhones did not previously own a smartphone, and just who conducted the study?
That has been remarked upon by a number of analysts, but it can also be easily inferred simply by smart phone sales numbers. Blackberry sales did not decrease. Palm sales did, but not enough to account for more than a small fraction of iPhone buyers. Just looking at the smart phone market shows that the iPhone, as expected, largely reached their target market of people with regular cell phones instead of smart phones.
What justification do you have for the idea that a large percentage of those people never sent SMS messages?
Again, just look at the nu