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Monday 23 September 2019

Online typing survey

I have posted a few pieces on keyboarding (here), but in my investigations, I found an online typing survey which is being run by three professors, from three nations: the project leader, Professor Antti Oulasvirta from Aalto University; Dr Anna Feit from ETH Zurich; and Professor Per Ola Kristensson of the University of Cambridge (n.d.).

You can find the survey online here. I found it quite interesting to undertake the survey both on a mobile phone, and on a desktop to see how much my typing speed varied. At the end of the questionnaire, they ask what device was used for the survey so the results are lined with others using the same type of device.

When I got my results, it surprised me that I got up to 77 words per minute on my desktop. None of the other typing test that I've done online came anywhere near that type of result, and I would not have expected that I could be that speedy. My average speed on the desktop was 57 words per minute. I was feeble on my mobile phone (but then I also tend to simply talk it in on my mobile).

What the survey didn't pick up was how many errors I had on the desktop. I typed, corrected, then hit enter on each phrase, correcting all my mistakes before entering. This meant I had a miraculous "0%" error rate. Actually, I make errors all the time, but tend to pick most of them up. However, that also means that my typing must actually be quite fast... fast enough to correct all my errors and still keep my average high.

The best thing about this typing test is that all the resulting summary data is being used for research into how fast people of various ages, and with various first languages, keyboard. the first paper published by the survey authors as listed below (Dhakal, Feit, Kristensson & Oulasvirta, 2018). I am looking forward to seeing many more papers produced from this data.

In my work with career clients, are often need to know the "average" keyboarding speed for particular industries. It would be nice if Dhakal et al. could add industry information at some point in the future, as well.


Sam

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