Design and Analysis of Intelligent Text Entry Systems with Function Structure Models and Envelope Analysis

Designing intelligent interactive text entry systems often relies on factors that are difficult to estimate or assess using traditional HCI design and evaluation methods. We introduce a complementary approach by adapting function structure models from engineering design. We extend their use by extracting controllable and uncontrollable parameters from function structure models and visualizing their impact using envelope analysis. Function structure models allow designers to understand a system in terms of its functions and flows between functions and decouple functions from function carriers. Envelope analysis allows the designer to further study how parameters affect variables of interest, for example, accuracy, keystroke savings and other dependent variables. We provide examples of function structure models and illustrate a complete envelope analysis by investigating a parameterized function structure model of predictive text entry. We discuss the implications of this design approach for both text entry system design and for critique of system contributions.