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.
I think the power of touchscreen phones has not been recognized yet. The idea is to leverage the interface to eliminate the need for very much typing. Check out Infospace FindIt app for iphone and you see that if the website is designed properly for touch screen then typing skills are not an issue. Give people predefined categories trees that take user to content within 3 button touches and user is pleased as punch. This not only applies to local search but to websearch as well. The cramming of the desktop web content onto a 2 inch screen didnt work. It wont work on a 3.5 inch screen either.
A followup point I would also like to make is that messaging apps can also be designed to leverage the touchscreen interface as well. Think predictive phrases rather than just predictive words! Once lower cost touchscreen phones go mass market next yr in US and a critical mass of content is developed specifically to leverage the large touch screen phones the search and banner ad industry will see a radical shift in traffic from desktop to phones.
I'll respectfully disagree with your multi-tap vs. predictive text usage analysis. Based on focus groups we ran with kids (8-18) the majority had their predictive text turned off. Why? bcs thy txt lk ths. Not like this. Predictive text slows them down. cya l8r.
I'm an experience texter and I hate predictive text because A) you have to actually know how to spell the word correctly to get the word to come up, and B) it hinders input of non-standard words (such as foreign words, peoples names, abbreviations, place names, etc). i still use Multitap and will continue to do so. It's just easier and less frusterating.
I totally agree with Aaron with this one. When was the last time a modern kid (and big kids, including myself) could spell correctly in this day of spell checkers?
So turning off predictive text is a conscious decision? You know, it's quicker — or at least les taps — to write the full word with predictive text than the shorter words with multitap. From the people I know (in Australia and Mexico, rather than the US) people (and youth) use predictive text, "txt spk" is more of a fashion statement. I don't know that many kids, so I can't comment on that.
For general messages its rare to type a word I don't know how to spell — and there's rarely an abbreviated txt spk form anyway. I agree that it hinders the input of non-standard words, although being non-standard I don't tend to use them that often anyway…although numbers are a problem. There's a brand of handset I wouldn't use because you can't switch between predictive text and multitap from the message, you have to go to the main menu and into the "options" menu. On my Nokia it's just a couple of taps of the hash key to change between predictive text and multitap.
Interesting aside on spelling, when I was in Mexico I liked predictive text because it not only let me know when I was spelling a spanish word incorrectly, but also when I was trying to use a word that didn't actually exist. I didn't know then, and still don't know, enough spanish to handle abbreviations of words. Still, typing in another language is not a very common scenario..
I'm with Aaron, based on a sample of one heavy texter. My daughter taps the words because she abbreviates most of them (and skips spaces betw sentences to conserve space). I'm a lot older and I like to have my spellings kosher so I do predicitive typing; but there certainly are situations when that is no good.
You would expect people to read the manual? Come on, nobody reads manuals. Also, i agree with the others about predictive text – I don't believe it's nearly as prevalent as you represent. Hell, I know lots of people in the industry who still multi-tap…