User Centered

If you've ever seen the show "The Weakest Link" you're familiar with the "bank!" concept. In the game, they ask each player a question. Each correct answer builds onto a running total. When a contestant yells "bank" that total value is stored off the to the side and the counter is reset to zero dollars and they start to build again (more info). Of course if you don't "bank" it and you get the answer wrong, you start back at zero anyway with nothing saved. The idea is that you're chaining together correct ideas and every so often you have to say "yes, this is on the right track... lets save this progress" or gamble that you can get all the way though without stumbling.

This is how predictive text entering is supposed to work in my opinion. You start punching keys on your phone and every once in awhile you "bank" it by picking from a list to put the software on the right track. Of course, this takes time to pick and choose in the middle of typing.... so you could hope for the big payoff by just hammering out all the letters looking at the garbage on the screen until you get to the end and if you're lucky the software will end up with the permutation of letters that results in some form a legible, desired word. If not, you get garbage and you have to delete the word and start over again. You are the weakest link. Good-bye!

This is essentially how it worked on my Motorola phone. It wasn't perfect but I was very pleasantly surprised by it considering I was sharing three or four letters per key (T9). My new phone has a qwerty layout keyboard that has one key sharing two letters (pictured above) and a different kind of predictive software that I have heard good reviews about it on youtube and web forums...where the "users" are. (notable exception: David Pogue). I honestly expected based on the reviews and feedback and experience with Motorola's offering that I would rarely have to correct typing again. Sure-Type learns names and complex words as I go and I think it even scans the email I'm responding (don't quote me on that). It all sounds (and actually is) great. But I think it just might be a little too smart for me. The biggest stumbles all come from Sure-Type trying to assume what I'm thinking and it has caused me many more headaches than my junky old RAZR that I lament. It's a man vs. machine problem where the machine isn't always that great at figuring out what this man really means.

The good news is that in general, I'm very happy with Sure-Type. I've learned from the BlackBerry Forums that if you just look at the keyboard instead of trying to figure out if the prediction will come though, it's much easier to type. I've also learned tips and tricks on tweaking the auto text work with the sure-type (auto text is like the auto-correct in word... you can define your own so it's easy to create shortcuts...example a "sm" will insert a for me for my cute text messages). Sure-type is about a million times better than the multi tap method, and it works pretty well overall. As I've said, the biggest problem here is with me and my typing skills. When I screw up, the software doesn't know *what* to do with me. But well, this is user centered blog, so we better hash all this out...


Back Up Back up 'cause it's on
If you typo a word then backspace to correct it, the software thinks it predicted a word wrong when you really just typed it wrong. Of course sometimes (oddly enough, when it predicts a word wrong) this is a good thing. But in the case of a typo it's absolutely frustrating...

Example: I want to type "Ive" (which the software will politely put the apostrophe in for me). I type i,v, and it's highlighting "iv" combo, so we're going down the right path. Oops, spoon thumbs strike again and I accidentally hit the QW button instead of the ER button. Now it's recommending "ICQ" as the desired input. so I backspace and hit ER and "space" and end up with "ice" as my word.

Wonderful. So I just delete the whole thing and retype and just get "uce" (?) as my primary recommendation because it thinks I'm not interested in iv* or ic* so it now tries to figure out what I want by starting with "u" and I have to scroll over to ive. That's a lot of work for I've just because I made one typo! Granted I should have corrected it by paying attention after deleting the Q from ICQ, but it's a strange idea to delete the last character and then have to reevaluate the entire word. My mindset when I was typing "iv" was "I'm on the right track..." and now the entire word is wrong? I can't even see the track anymore.

Take it to the bank

That leads me to problem number two which is related to, but bigger than the first. It doesn't remember your forced entries. Forced entries are what I'm calling the "bank!" you do with predictive text software. Steering the software where you want it to go; you build a word and select which combination from the possible choices you'd like and it uses that as the baseline for further entries.

As an example again. This time around when I spell "I've" I type i,v, then I "Bank it!" by selecting the iv combo:

I'm telling the software. Ok- we've gone this far. Lets stop and double check our work, calibrate and mesh. This is what I'm after.. got it? Ok. So then I go on to press the "ER" key and see ive & ivr (so far so good...) and then!: ice|uce|ucr|icr

.... wait...what? I thought we went over this already? I said "iv" so why are you bringing up old stuff we already settled? It's like a bad relationship.

As I mentioned though, it's got ive right there in its sights, so all is well, but with longer words it's frustrating because backspacing/deleting still triggers all these other suggestions to come up which just adds unnecessary noise. The end result is that there's an oppotunity lost here. Yes the software works great. But there's a chance to make it better by remembering what I've banked. I'm not going to choose "Iv" then later on in the word choose "Ic.." instead, I'm just not quite that fickle. So leave that stuff off. If I don't bank it at any point along the way for longer worlds, and just look at the keys & hammer away, the word "California" ends up being "Validpenis". No, I didn't make that up, that's what it really ended up being. But at least I feel comfortable that my phone thinks that's important. I'd sure hate for it to be invalid.