COGS2300 Article Summary

James Card

COGS2300 Cognitive Simulations

Spring 1998

CogS 2300 Scientific Methods, Models, and Simulations
Myers/Carter Spring 1998

Assignment

Find an article in any field that describes an experiment. Determine the information for the article summary below and attach a copy of the article. Not all information will be pertinent. If hypotheses aren't specifically stated see if you can summarize what you think they are. Be brief (this first time :-) )

Article Summary

An examination of three user-interface enhancements for data entry into handheld computers. The authors attempt to extend the conclusions drawn from their tests with handheld devices to other systems.
Abstract

"Efficiently entering information into a computer is key to enjoying the benefits of computing. This paper describes three intelligent user interfaces: handwriting recognition, adaptive menus, and predictive fillin. In the context of adding a person's name and address to an electronic organizer, tests show handwriting recognition is slower than typing on an on-screen, soft keyboard, while adaptive menus and predictive fillin can be twice as fast. This paper also presents strategies for applying these three interfaces to other information collection domains."

Article Source

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 5 (1996) pages 329-349, Submitted 5/96; published 12/96
Available: https://jair.org/index.php/jair/article/view/10179.

Area of investigation

Human - machine interface design

Authors

Jeffrey C. Schlimmer and Patricia Crane Wells

Affiliation of the 1st author

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA.

Title of the article

"Quantitative Results Comparing Three Intelligent Interfaces for Information Capture: A Case Study Adding Name Information into an Electronic Personal Organizer"

Purpose of the study

The study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of three enhancements to the user interface of a handheld computer.

Hypotheses

"We hypothesize that [handwriting] recognition, adaptive menus, and predictive fillin speed adding a new name [to the computer's file]."

Independent variable(s)

The independent variables were the following user interface elements

handwriting recognition
adaptive menus
predicitive fillin

Dependent Variable(s)

The dependent variable was the time required to enter new records into the computer's file.

Method

Participants

Apparatus

Names

Materials/Questionnaires

Procedure

Results

Improvements in data entry speeds ranging from 29% to 294%, with the fastest results reported by using the combination of all the tested data interface components together.

Conclusions

The tested enhancements significantly improve the speed of entering name and address data into a handheld computer, and may well be faster than using a paper-and-pencil method for recording the data.

While the results of these tests are interesting and probably useful, I have to wonder whether the ultimate solution to the problem explored here will not be found in some combination of voice recognition, business card scanning and OCR equipment, and direct infrared transfer of name and address data between two personal electronic devices (rather than hand you my business card, I point my PDA at yours and press the TRANSMIT button).