Improving usability of mobile devices by means of accelerometers

In this thesis we will present our suggestions to how improvements of document reading and text input can be made when aiming for better usability of mobile devices - using accelerometer input. Other research has been made with the same goal in mind; a better overview over large documents in regards to document reading, and minimizing key presses in regards to text input. But we felt that the results gained from this prior research could be further improved. Research has also been made concentrating on the use of an accelerometer as an input method, in order to create a single handed control method for mobile devices. As for the document reading prototype, we suggest that an improvement can be gained by giving a user the possibility of controlling page and line focus by simple wrist action or gestures – i.e. tilting the mobile device. We also feel that this gives a user quicker access to find what he/she is looking for in a document. As for the text input prototype we feel the current typing methods available are not quite as user friendly as it could be. Therefore the accelerometer is used to allow the user to select from word suggestion popup windows to simplify the text input process. After the design and implementation phase has been completed, we assemble a test group in order to do some experiments and to check if we reach any of the wanted improvements. And to find out if any of the participants in the experiments could see themselves using our prototypes, or even just parts of them.