August 17th, 2007
Study: iPhone Virtual Keyboard not as good as a QWERTY Keyboard
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
The last time I wrote about this, I received a lot of comments indicating how wrong I was, as well as the usability study I wrote about. Yet here we are with another study that comes to the same conclusion.
The study concluded that participants that normally used a phone with a QWERTY keypad took almost twice as long to enter the same text messages with the iPhone as they did with their normal phone. Participants who normally used a numeric multitap phone took nearly the same length of time to enter text messages on the iPhone.
“For QWERTY users, texting was fast and accurate. But when they switched to the iPhone, they were frustrated with the touch sensitive keyboard,” said Jen Allen, Usability Specialist, User Centric. Source: DailyTech
We Say: In this case, I’m not sure how accurate this study is. They chose non-iPhone users. They were only given one minute to familiarize themselves with the keyboard. Since most of the respondents of my prior story indicated they got better with practice and through the use of the predictive text feature, in this case I’m just not sure the findings are valid - and I’m sure our readers will let us know.
eas says:
Newsflash: People are more effective using tools they are accustomed to than tools they’ve used for less than an hour.
I’m pretty damn slow when I pick up someone’s blackberry and try to type. I wouldn’t be surprised if I could type as fast or faster than I can type on my iPhone with a little practice on the blackberry.
I would be very surprised if the blackberry keyboard dissolved into more usable screen real estate when I stop typing and just want to browse the web.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Mark says:
Personally, I know I’d have a problem with the iPhone, but that’s because I’ve been touch-typing for over 25 years and am well-used to the tactile feedback. Not having any is something I doubt I could get used to.
But others might love it. Such studies are, I think, too limited to be of much use.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
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August 21st, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Ian Wish says:
haha, why even publish the results of this!!! No shit blackberry users are going to have a hard time when only given 1 minute!!! to familiarize themselves… I’ll admit it does take a day or two to fully get used to the iPhones keyboard, but once I got it, I could type just as fast as on my blackberry and then when done, guess what, it disappears and becomes useable screen for viewing! I’d take two days over a tiny screen any day.
July 18th, 2008 at 7:04 pm