Improving structured data entry on mobile devices

Structure makes data more useful, but also makes data entry more cumbersome. Studies have found that this is especially true on mobile devices, as mobile users often reject structured personal information management tools because the structure is too restrictive and makes entering data slower. To overcome these problems, we introduce a new data entry technique that lets users create customized structured data in an unstructured manner. We use a novel notepad-like editing interface with built-in data detectors that allow users to specify structured data implicitly and reuse the structures when desired. To minimize the amount of typing, it provides intelligent, context-sensitive autocomplete suggestions using personal and public databases that contain candidate information to be entered. We implemented these mechanisms in an example application called Listpad. Our evaluation shows that people using Listpad create customized structured data 16% faster than using a conventional mobile database tool. The speed further increases to 42% when the fields can be autocompleted.