- Typing speed on mobile devices is catching up to that of physical keyboards
- 10-19-year-olds can type about 10 words per minute faster than can people in their 40s
- People spend an average of six hours per day on their mobile devices, so it’s no wonder they are skilled and have correspondingly fast fingers
- Users typing with two thumbs achieved 38 words per minute on average, which is only about 25% slower than the typing speeds we observed in a similar large-scale study of physical keyboards
- The best predictor of performance is whether you use one finger or two thumbs to type. Over 74% of people type with two thumbs, and the speed increase it offers is very significant. The study also found that enabling the auto-correct of words offers a clear benefit, whereas word prediction, or manually choosing word suggestions, does not.
- The fastest speed the researchers saw on a touchscreen was a user who managed the remarkable rate of 85 words per minute.
- If you want to try the typing-speed test yourself, you can have a go at http://typingtest.aalto.fi/
The findings appear in the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services.
Source: Rebecca Lehmann for ETH Zurich