Comparison of Typing Efficiency Between PC and Smartphone in the Case of Younger Generations

Abstract

In recent years, smartphones have increased its penetration rate every year, and in 2015 the holding rate of each household exceeds 65%. Especially the rate is very high in Japanese twenties. Especially in the 20s smartphone utilization rate is high, exceeding 90% and it is the highest number among all ages. In this way, while the utilization of smartphones increases among young people, the ownership rate of Personal Computers (PCs) decreases year by year. Under the background of the spread of smartphones, students who write documents such as university reports by smartphones are appearing. From the appearance of such a student, we made the following hypothesis; for young people who have more opportunities to touch smartphones than personal computers, it is more efficient to type on smartphones than typing on a personal computer. In order to verify this hypothesis, we compare the typing efficiency using keyboards of PC and that of software keyboard of smartphones in this study. In order to collect necessary data for comparison, we created an online typing service named “hogehoge typing.” And we conducted typing experiments using this service for 21 students around 20’s. Analysis of the data obtained from the experiment revealed that the smartphone can perform typing more efficiently.