Peer-reviewed research
Speech Recognition Versus Typing: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation
Johanna Kneifel et al., TEXT2030: MobileHCI 2022 Workshop on Shaping Text Entry Research in 2030 (ACM), 2022
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- A four-page workshop paper from Simon Fraser University and King Saud University that compared mobile text entry by speech recognition and by typing in a transcription task, then interviewed participants about their preferences and the pain points of editing. It is the most recent controlled comparison of speech and typing speed we found that uses a modern recognizer.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed workshop paper with statistical tests, but short and based on one task and one group of participants. It reports significance and effect sizes, not the words per minute of each condition in the text (those are in a figure), so treat it as direction and size of effect rather than a benchmark speed.
Facts taken from this source
- In a 2022 mobile text-entry study, speech recognition was faster than typing, but the error rate for typing was lower.
“speech recognition was faster, while the error rate for typing was lower” (Abstract)
- In the 2022 mobile study, speech recognition needed fewer operations per character on average than typing.
“Speech recognition needed fewer operations per character on average” (Results (section 4))
- In a 2022 mobile text-entry study, speech recognition produced a significant difference in entry speed in words per minute against typing, with a large effect size, and speech was the faster method.
“We observed a significant effect on entry speeds in terms of words per minute (WPM), F(1,195) = 343, p < .001, with a large effect size” (Results (section 4))
- In the 2022 mobile study, the time participants spent reviewing each phrase before moving on did not differ significantly between speech recognition and typing.
“We also measured verification time, which is the time participants took to review a phrase before moving to the next, but did not observe a significant effect between the conditions, F(1,195) = .77, p =.38.” (Results (section 4))