© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The Truth About Arrow Keys Angelene Nery, Christy Harper, Michael Bartha / Dec. 2012

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 2 IT decision makers often question the modified cross implementation of arrow keys on HP products. Why??

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 3 To help answer those questions, we want to: Objective Determine if users perform better, equally as good, or worse using the modified cross than the inverted-T on the basis of speed and accuracy Understand user experience of the two arrow key configurations

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 4 Tested two arrow key configurations: Study Specs Inverted-T Envy 14 Modified Cross Envy 6

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 5 Study Specs 24 HP employees tested on both laptops Users went through 2 different pathways (short and long) using arrow keys Extra data editing tasks (e.g. bold a word, typing a word) were weaved along the pathway (in red) They were timed Errors were recorded using a keystroke logging software Testing

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. Results

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 7 Assumption: The up and down arrow keys on the modified cross will cause more problems because of the size and shape. Users rated the up and down arrow keys significantly lower than on the modified cross than the inverted-T Users also rated the shape of the up and down arrow keys significantly less on the modified cross. User Belief Too Small Too Large Modifed Cross 3.29 Inverted-T 5.21 Disliked Liked Modifed Cross 5.17 Inverted-T 7.25

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 8 Results Extraneous keys are extra directional key inputs that were not intended The right and left arrows were accidentally hit more times than the down arrow. The up arrow is not significantly different than the others This is across both arrow key configurations Errors

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 9 Results 2% of keystroke inputs were erroneous Erroneous inputs is when a user pressed the wrong key when they were trying to press another key. (e.g. I intended to type the left arrow but pressed the Shift key instead) The shift key was erroneously hit more times than the other keys (but this is not statistically significant) There was no significant difference of errors in general between the two configurations. Errors SHIFT

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 10 Assumption: The inverted-T will perform better than the modified cross. User preference indicated that: Users felt that they needed to look down at the keyboard to find the arrow keys more so on the modified cross configuration. ( I felt like I needed to look down at the keyboard to locate the arrow keys.) User belief Disagree Agree Modifed Cross 7.04 Inverted-T 5.54

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 11 Rankings

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 12 Results Arrow key times are the cumulative times of using just the arrow keys (sans extra editing tasks) Using the modified cross arrow key configuration is faster than the inverted-T when used in isolation When using the alphanumeric pad in conjunction with the arrow keys, there was no significant difference of time Speed/Time

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 13 User comments “Station A (inverted-T) unit has the key configuration that I am accustomed to, but the other layout was not bad. I think after getting used to Station B (modified cross) key configuration I might be more efficient with it, it felt like less movement of my fingers.” When asked if the arrow key configuration matters to them and if they pay attention to configuration, it seemed that users were pretty neutral. Disagree Agree How much configuration matters 6.04 How they rated paying attention to configuration 5.20

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. Conclusion

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 15 Summary A Human Factors study of 24 participants with statistically analyzed results showed that using the modified cross arrow keys in isolation is faster than the inverted-T. Using it in conjunction with the alphanumeric pad yielded no significant difference with speed against the inverted-T. Errors were mostly made with the left and right arrow keys (not the up and down arrow keys) across both configurations. Errors between the two configurations held no significant difference. People made statistically the same amount of mistakes on both configurations.