Tools for Text Entry Evaluators

In developing EdgeWrite, tools were necessary for performing rigorous text entry evaluations with human subjects. We wrote TextTest for conducting text entry experiments and logging data. We wrote StreamAnalyzer for parsing and analyzing that data, and making it easy to paste into Microsoft Excel or a statistics package like SAS JMP or IBM SPSS. If you would like to know more about how these programs work, see our paper below. If you wish to cite either tool, please cite:

Wobbrock, J.O. and Myers, B.A. (2006). Analyzing the input stream for character-level errors in unconstrained text entry evaluations. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 13 (4), pp. 458-489. DOI: 10.1145/1188816.1188819. [acm]

TextTest

TextTest allows text entry evaluators to rigorously and precisely measure text entry performance provided the text entry method can be made to send text input to any application on a Windows XP or Windows Vista operating system.

StreamAnalyzer

StreamAnalyzer analyzes the text input stream logs created by TextTest and produces text file output that can be easily pasted into Microsoft Excel or a statistics package like SAS JMP® or SPSS for Windows®. Besides parsing and analyzing batches of XML log files, StreamAnalyzer can also take presented strings and input streams typed directly on the console when run with the -d command line switch.