Analysis of children's handwriting on touchscreen phones

  • Authors:

  • Elba del Carmen Valderrama Bahamóndez;Thomas Kubitza;Niels Henze;Albrecht Schmidt

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany & Technological University of Panama, Panama City, Panama;University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany;University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany;University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Drawing and handwriting play a central role in primary schools. So far handwriting is practiced mainly on paper and blackboards. Providing tasks on paper can be challenging in developing countries. With the potential availability of mobile phones in classrooms, there is a new medium that can be used. We determined the effect of different touch technologies on children's handwriting for 18 third grade and 20 sixth grade participants. Children drew and wrote using different input techniques. We measured their performance and asked teachers to assess the legibility. We show that writing on touchscreens is less legible and slower than on paper. Further, the comparison of touchscreen technologies indicates that capacitive screens operated with a stylus yield the highest readability and are faster to use for writing than resistive screens. In contrast to these quantitative findings participants from third grade indicated that they prefer resistive screens with a thin stylus compared to using capacitive screens with a stylus or fingers.