Predictive, indeed
Most times I read anything about SMS communications, I hear complaints about text input. Maybe it has something to do with the fat, arthritic fingers of the critics; or maybe they see twelve–key typing as some kind of threat to the 101–button keyboard… I just get the impression they’re jackasses.
Yeah, typing with the twelve keys of a normal mobile phone in ‘Multitap’ mode is a massive pain in the ass… especially if you need to write “seventy” or something similar; that’s seventeen keystrokes right there. If your phone is less than six or seven years old, though, (simple test: does it weigh less than three pounds?) you probably have access to T9 ‘predictive text’ input, something that is normally activated by default… something most people turn off immediately because they have no idea how it works or how to control it.
T9 tries its best to predict what word you’re typing (you only need to hit each key once, so typing “seventy” now a seven–keystroke affair), but it’s far from perfect and it’s often wrong. “Gone” and “home” are both rendered “good”, “if” is constantly displayed “he”, and “no” will get you “on”. You do, fortunately, have access to the list of potential word matches for your input; so when you’re presented with “good” and you wanted “home”, hitting a special modifier key will clear things up. Unfortunately, that key differs from manufacturer to manufacturer, making it difficult to get used to a Sony Ericsson if you’re been using a Nokia.
Relying on its internal dictionary to check words, T9 is often missing something important (try swearing)… but the dictionaries can be edited. It also relies heavily on correct punctuation, something a lot of people have trouble with, so typing “dont” will get you “foot” unless you include the requisite apostrophe. Given all its flaws, it’s no surprise so few people see T9 as a viable text input method; sending them back to Multitap, an even worse technique. I do, however, have a small suggestion to improve predictive text input, bringing it closer to being a viable text input method.
- Expand the dictionaries — modern phones have more than enough memory to store a few thousand extra words; including common names, abbreviations, colloquialisms and swear words.
- Consider context — when rolling through the potential candidates for words, given the input, the phone should examine the surrounding words (and indeed the entire sentence) for context. Typing “4261431466314663#” shouldn’t produce “Has he good good.”, it should give me exactly what I wanted: “Has he gone home?”. Given a knowledge of the basic structure of the English language, that shouldn’t be too hard for a computer to come up with.
- Consider your users — remember that most of the people using SMS are teenagers and/or morons. Their spelling is terrible, IRC–style abbreviations run rampant, and punctuation is nonexistent. Deal with it.
Of course, none of this is likely to ever happen. To big–business software manufacturers, “improved functionality” means “added features… even if many of them are useless”. It almost certainly never means “work on what you’ve got, and make it better”.