مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - A USABILITY STUDY OF ONLINE HANDWRITING RECOGNITION SYSTEM GRAFFITI

Abstract :

All mobile devices use similar methods for text entry, because of their limitations. One of these methods is handwriting recognition systems which has different applications in different devices. In this study, the effects of handedness were examined whether it has any effect on usability scores and handwriting speed on a Graffiti handwriting recognition system in Palm-OS. This study was carried out on 20 Middle East Technical University students who have no experience on Graffiti with the age range of 20-28. Ten of them named themselves as lefthanded and ten of them named themselves as a right-handed. Data collected from these users with two user tests and one questionnaire. In the first user test, users supposed to write a given text on an A4 paper. In the second user test, they supposed to write given text to PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) via Graffiti handwriting recognition system. At the end, System Usability Scale (SAS) is used to see the usability of the Graffiti. By this way, writing speed, error rates, and usability of the system can be seen. In the paper based user test, left handed users significantly writes slower than right handed users. On the other hand, there is no significant difference between writing speed of left-handed and right-handed users. Also, there is no correlation between writing speed difference on this task. That means, being a fast writer on paper does not meant to be a fast writer on a handwriting recognition system because those two activities need different mental and motor skills.