abstract

Input observer: measuring text entry and pointing performance from naturalistic everyday computer use

Authors:

Abigail Evans,

Jacob O. WobbrockAuthors Info & Claims

CHI EA '11: CHI '11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1879 - 1884

https://doi.org/10.1145/1979742.1979871

Published: 07 May 2011 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

In this paper we describe the Input Observer, a background application that will be capable of measuring a user's text entry and pointing abilities from everyday computer use "in the wild." The application runs quietly in the background of the user's computer and utilizes global Windows Hooks to observe the text entry input stream and use of the mouse, and will yield data equivalent to results from lab-based measures of text entry and target acquisition. A major challenge is the lack of a task model from which researchers can know the intent of the user at every moment. We describe our approach to handling this issue for both text entry and mouse pointing.

References

[1]

Chapuis, O., Blanch, R. and Beaudouin-Lafon, M. (2007). Fitts' law in the wild: A field study of aimed movements. LRI Technical Repport Number 1480. Laboratorie de Recherche en Informatique. Orsay, France: Universite de Paris Sud.

Google Scholar

[2]

Coyne, K.P. Conducting simple usability studies with users with disabilities. Proc. HCI Int'l 2005. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2005).

Google Scholar

[3]

Dixon, M. and Fogarty, J. A. (2010). Prefab: Implementing advanced behaviors using pixel-based reverse engineering of interface structure. In Proc. CHI 2010. New York: ACM Press, 1525--1534.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

English Lexicon Project. http://elexicon.wustl.edu/

Google Scholar

[5]

Feng, J., Sears, A. and Law, C.M. Conducting empirical experiments involving participants with spinal cord injuries. Proc. HCI Int'l '05. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2005).

Google Scholar

[6]

Gajos, K.Z., Wobbrock, J.O. and Weld, D.S. Improving the performance of motor-impaired users with automatically-generated, ability-based interfaces. Proc. CHI 2008. ACM Press (2008), 1257--1266.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Hurst, A., Hudson, S. E. and Mankoff, J. (2010). Automatically identifying targets users interact with during real world tasks. Proc. IUI 2010. New York: ACM Press, 11--20.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

MacKenzie, I.S. Fitts' law as a research and design tool in human-computer interaction. Human-Computer Interaction 7, 1 (1992), 91--139.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[9]

MacKenzie, I.S. and Soukoreff, R.W. Phrase sets for evaluating text entry techniques. In Extended Abstracts CHI 2003. ACM (2003), 754--755.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[10]

Soukoreff, R.W. and MacKenzie, I.S. Measuring errors in text entry tasks: An application of the Levenshtein string distance statistic. Extended Abstracts CHI 2001. ACM Press (2001), 319--320.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[11]

Soukoreff, R.W. and MacKenzie, I.S. Recent developments in text-entry error rate measurement. Extended Abstracts CHI 2004. ACM Press (2004), 1425--1428.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

Wobbrock, J.O. Measures of text entry performance. In Text Entry Systems: Mobility, Accessibility, Universality, I. S. MacKenzie and K. Tanaka-Ishii (eds.). Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, 47--74, 2007.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Rodrigues AGuerreiro TFitton DHorton MRead JSim G(2014)SWATProceedings of the 28th International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference on HCI 2014 - Sand, Sea and Sky - Holiday HCI10.5555/2742941.2742991(341-346)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2742941.2742991
Evans AWobbrock JKonstan JChi EHöök K(2012)Taming wild behaviorProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2207676.2208338(1947-1956)Online publication date: 5-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2207676.2208338

Index Terms

Input observer: measuring text entry and pointing performance from naturalistic everyday computer use
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

Recommendations

Taming wild behavior: the input observer for obtaining text entry and mouse pointing measures from everyday computer use
CHI '12: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We present the Input Observer, a tool that can run quietly in the background of users' computers and measure their text entry and mouse pointing performance from everyday use. In lab studies, participants are presented with prescribed tasks, enabling ...
Stylus based text input using expanding CIRRIN
AVI '06: Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces

CIRRIN [3] is a stylus based text input technique for mobile devices with a touch sensitive display. In this paper we explore the benefit of expanding the letters of CIRRIN to reduce the overall difficulty of selecting a letter. We adapted the existing ...
Invisiboard: maximizing display and input space with a full screen text entry method for smartwatches
MobileHCI '16: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

The small displays of smartwatches make text entry difficult and time consuming. While text entry rates can be increased, this continues to occur at the expense of available screen display space. Soft keyboards can easily use half the display space of ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

CHI EA '11: CHI '11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2011

2554 pages

ISBN:9781450302685

DOI:10.1145/1979742

General Chair:
Desney Tan
Microsoft Research
,
Program Chairs:
Bo Begole
PARC
,
Wendy A. Kellogg
IBM Research

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 May 2011

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Abstract

Conference

CHI '11

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '11: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 7 - 12, 2011

BC, Vancouver, Canada

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025

Sponsor:
sigchi

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
157
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)2
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 28 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Rodrigues AGuerreiro TFitton DHorton MRead JSim G(2014)SWATProceedings of the 28th International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference on HCI 2014 - Sand, Sea and Sky - Holiday HCI10.5555/2742941.2742991(341-346)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2742941.2742991
Evans AWobbrock JKonstan JChi EHöök K(2012)Taming wild behaviorProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2207676.2208338(1947-1956)Online publication date: 5-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2207676.2208338

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Taming wild behavior: the input observer for obtaining text entry and mouse pointing measures from everyday computer use

Stylus based text input using expanding CIRRIN

Invisiboard: maximizing display and input space with a full screen text entry method for smartwatches