Numeric Keypads or Character Keyboards for Numeric Entries on Surveys and Forms: Surprising Results from Older Adults Using Mobile Devices

These days a growing number of adults are using smartphones to fill out online forms or surveys (For a review of recent empirical studies on older adults using smartphone when answering forms see: [2, 3, 4]). The touchscreen keyboard that pops open on a smartphone when users must type their answers into the form can be challenging to use. This is due to its small size and the fact that for some smartphones, the initial keyboard that opens has only characters, not numbers. If the form requires a number to be entered, a user must press a small button, located in the far-left corner to change the keyboard so that it displays numbers. Using the small touchscreen is challenging for older adults, whose fine motor skills may have deteriorated with age (Loos and Romano Bergstrom [12]). Survey and form designers face the challenge of creating an interface that is both convenient to use while also leading to accurate data entry. More recently, some survey designers have been using a numeric keypad design on mobile phones when the expected entry is a number. This is based on the idea that the numeric keypad, with its bigger touch areas offering only numbers, would lead to an improved user experience. This paper reports the results of an experiment with older adults, comparing performance when using a numeric keypad to that when using a touchscreen character keyboard for number entries on a smartphone. When entering a number, results indicate that the numeric keypad design did not lead to more accurate data entry over the character keyboard design. While overall efficiency was also no different between the two designs, there was some evidence that the keypad design takes users less time to initially enter the number. While participants across both conditions were equally satisfied with their experience completing the survey, they overwhelmingly preferred to use the numeric keypad to enter numbers. For designers creating interfaces for smartphones, the recommendation is to use a numeric keypad for input fields that require a number as the answer.