How Much Faster Can You Type by Speaking in Hindi?: Comparing Keyboard-Only and Keyboard+Speech Text Entry

Can a reasonably robust speech recognition engine improve text entry speeds in Indian languages in spite of the time spent by users in correcting errors? We investigate this question in this paper. We conducted a within-subject longitudinal study to evaluate performance of keyboard-only input and keyboard+speech input for Hindi with 20 novice users. We found that keyboard+speech input is 2.5 times faster than keyboard input. Results also showed that the difference in performance was lower for phrases picked from poems, songs and phrases that used less frequently used words. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study that compares performance of these two input modalities in an Indian language.