Study of Input Modalities on PDA’s

PDAs can be useful for point of care medical applications because of their portability and wireless connectivity capability. However, their small screen and input modalities affect the performance and user satisfaction. In this article we present a study in which six methods for numeric and textual data input on a PDA are compared. The results indicate that the voice input modality was preferred for textual input and a custom made soft keyboard for numeric input. 1. Intr oduction Personal digital assistants (PDAs) can be very useful, especially in the medical area. Because of their portability they can be used by medical professional