| Summary: | 碩士 === 朝陽科技大學 === 設計研究所 === 97 === In this study a usability assessment was conducted on the operational interface of text message input mode on mobile phones such as Nokia 6180、Motorola E365、Sony Ericsson W800i and Samsung SGH-168. The subjects were young users aged between 19-30. The questionnaire planning was based on the subjects’ experiences and their subjective thinking in using mobile phones.
This study is to understand young users’ perception and needs of mobile phone usability concerning the input of text messages first, then observing and recording the subject’s operating process, to find out its problems and set up the typical tasks of this study. The aim is to reach some design guidelines for better interface design for the function of text message input mode on mobile phones.
32 subjects were separated into four groups to conduct the typical tasks on mobile phones of different brands. The findings of this study are as follows:
◎Different brand of mobile phones mostly has various input designs except for the arrangement of numerical keys. Besides, the arrangement of phonetic-symbol keys, alphabet keys and other function keys were all varied between different brands.
◎With clustering analysis on the results of the questionnaire survey, there are nine factors emerged : factor of switching between language input modes, factor of understandings on hierarchical structure of the menu, factor of text-to-icon correspondence, factor of independent keys, factor of understandability of terms used in every layer of the menu, factor of shortcut keys, factor of requirements,factor of terminology, and factor of functions.
◎ When the user selected any item on the menu, the item had better been emphasized with changed colors or block fonts.
◎A feed back for confirmation should be given to any input action from the user, e.g. the display can change somehow at once following the input.
◎ During the experiment, it was found that most subjects didn’t aware of the arrangement of the shortcut key for switching between language input modes. So the effectiveness of any shortcut key arrangement should be considered before it was designed.
◎In terms of text input operations, we found in this experiment that the thing which most troubled our subjects were switching between various language input modes.
◎We also found that most subjects tried the ‘*’ key first to see if it is the shortcut key for switching between various language input modes. So this study suggests manufacturers to unify the ‘*’ key as this shortcut key. Moreover, the language input mode which our subjects most familiar with was the phonetic input mode.In addition, the thing which they feel the most confusing was the terminology of options on the menu of English input mode such as input modes of “Intelligent English”, “T9”, “ITAP” and so on.
In conclusion, it is found in this study that if we set out to enhance the usability of a user interface, then all terminologies and icons on the every layer of the menu must be clear and easy understanding enough, so that users can be less confused and less defeated.
|
|---|
