Min Lin
Personal Homepage:
http://userpages.umbc.edu/~mlin4Current place of employment:
UMBCMin Lin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Information Systems Department of UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County). He is a research assistant of Interactive Systems Research Center, and actively participated in various research projects including Chinese text entry on mobile phones, voice-based navigation techniques, target selection on mobile devices under mobile conditions, and etc. His keypad design for Motorola's stroke input method for mobile phones successfully helps users to construct more accurate mental model of the system and therefore significantly improves text entry performance. The design has been adopted by Motorola and started shipping to Chinese market. During the summer of 2003, he worked in the accessibility group of IBM T. J. Watson Research Center as a research intern.
He is a member of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction). He serves in the program committee of the IRMA (Information Resources Management Association) 2006 International Conference. He also reviews for various conferences such as CHI (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), DUX (Conference on Designing for User Experience), and STC (Society for Technical Communication).
Publications by Min Lin (bibliography)
» 2007 «
Lin, Min and Sears, Andrew (2007): Constructing Chinese characters: keypad design for mobile phones. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 26 (2) pp. 165-178
“Increased use of mobile phones and associated services in China highlights the need for effective Chinese input methods for mobile devices. Mapping thousands of characters to a standard telephone keypad is a significant challenge. Structure-based methods provide an appealing known-character/known-code solution, but assigning multiple strokes to each key forces users to learn new, often unfamiliar, mappings. Using an established stroke input method, our study revealed important effects of keypad legend on performance. Novice user performance was evaluated with several alternative keypad designs. The results confirmed that both abstract symbols and concrete examples helped improve the usability of the keypad in Chinese text-entry tasks. Further, combining abstract symbols and concrete examples resulted in performance nearly tripling as compared to the original design. The stroke-to-key mapping accuracy also increased significantly. Handwriting analysis confirmed that the reduced errors are directly associated with the keypad-based text-entry technique.”
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Lin, Min, Goldman, Rich, Price, Kathleen J., Sears, Andrew and Jacko, Julie A. (2007): How do people tap when walking? An empirical investigation of nomadic data entry. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 65 (9) pp. 759-769
“When mobile devices are used on the move, a user's limited visual resources are split between interacting with the mobile devices and maintaining awareness of the surrounding environment. In this study, we examined stylus-based tapping operations on a PDA under three mobility situations: seated, walking on a treadmill, and walking through an obstacle course. The results revealed that Fitts' Law continues to be effective even under the most challenging obstacle course condition. While target selection times did not differ between the various mobility conditions, overall task completion times, error rates, and several measures of workload differed significantly. Diminished performance under the obstacle course condition was attributed to increased demands on attention associated with navigating through the obstacle course. Results showed that the participants in the obstacle course condition were able to tap on a 6.4 mm-diameter target with 90% accuracy, but they reduced their walking speed by 36% and perceived an increased workload. Extending earlier research, we found that treadmill-based conditions were able to generate representative data for task selection times, but accuracy differed significantly from the more realistic obstacle course condition.”
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» 2006 «
Price, Kathleen J., Lin, Min, Feng, Jinjuan, Goldman, Rich, Sears, Andrew and Jacko, Julie A. (2006): Motion does matter: an examination of speech-based text entry on the move. In Universal Access in the Information Society, 4 (3) pp. 246-257
“Desktop interaction solutions are often inappropriate for mobile devices due to small screen size and portability needs. Speech recognition can improve interactions by providing a relatively hands-free solution that can be used in various situations. While mobile systems are designed to be transportable, few have examined the effects of motion on mobile interactions. This paper investigates the effect of motion on automatic speech recognition (ASR) input for mobile devices. Speech recognition error rates (RER) have been examined with subjects walking or seated, while performing text input tasks and the effect of ASR enrollment conditions on RER. The obtained results suggest changes in user training of ASR systems for mobile and seated usage.”
Copyrights may apply
» 2005 «
Lin, Min and Sears, Andrew (2005): Chinese character entry for mobile phones: a longitudinal investigation. In Interacting with Computers, 17 (2) pp. 121-146
“The increasing popularity of Short Message Services (SMS) in China highlights the need for effective and efficient methods for entering Chinese text on mobile phones. While stroke-based methods have potential advantages over pronunciation-based solutions, usability issues have limited the effectiveness of existing stroke-based methods. One significant usability challenge has been the ambiguous stroke-to-key mapping rules that are typically employed. We proposed a new solution that employs a combination of abstract symbols and example strokes to help users map strokes to keys more effectively. A longitudinal experiment was used to evaluate character entry performance using both objective and subjective measures for our new design as well as the existing solution. The results confirmed that a new design allows for improved performance as well as higher satisfaction levels as compared to the original design. Further, after approximately 1 h of experience with the stroke-based method, novices were able to enter Chinese text at speeds comparable to that observed with the pronunciation-based Pinyin method. Results showed that the new design provided users with a better understanding of the system throughout the study, beginning with their first exposure to the keypad. By utilizing a combination of abstract representations and concrete examples of the available strokes, the new design reduced the ambiguity that typically exists regarding stroke-to-key mappings. In this way, usability was improved without any changes to the underlying technologies. Our results demonstrate that stroke-based solutions for Chinese character entry can be effective alternatives for mobile phones, providing an effective alternative for the many individuals who can write Chinese but do not speak the Mandarin dialect that serves as the basis for Pinyin. The improved solution could also be used with a traditional numeric keypad to allow one-handed data entry for desktop or mobile computers.”
Copyrights may apply
Lin, Min and Sears, Andrew (2005): Graphics matter: a case study of mobile phone keypad design for Chinese input. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2005. pp. 1593-1596. Available online
“Developing more effective and efficient Chinese character input methods has the potential to help Chinese mobile phone users (currently 320 millions) input text messages. iTAP(R) supports input based on the writing structure of Chinese characters. Current keypad graphics include three items: digits (0-9), letters (A-Z), and symbols that represent the minimum writing units of Chinese characters (strokes). Our study revealed the difficulties of mapping these strokes to individual keys using the current symbols. We present a case study illustrating the user-centered redesign of these symbols. The new symbols allow for faster entry speeds and lower error rates as compared to the current commercial solution. Results with our solution were also favorable when compared to Pinyin, a popular cross-cultural solution relying on the Roman alphabet. The new design is in the process of being integrated into commercial mobile phones for users who would prefer native input methods for Chinese.”
Copyrights may apply
» 2004 «
Lin, Min, Lutters, Wayne G. and Kim, Tina S. (2004): Understanding the micronote lifecycle: improving mobile support for informal note taking. In: Dykstra-Erickson, Elizabeth and Tscheligi, Manfred (eds.) Proceedings of ACM CHI 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria. pp. 687-694. Available online
“People frequently write messages to themselves. These informal, hurried personal jottings serve as temporary storage for notable information as well as reminders for future action. Many mobile technologies have been designed specifically to support this ubiquitous behavior; however, adoption has been universally problematic. Despite its clear utility, the process of taking micronotes stubbornly resists computing support. This field study examines the lifecycles of the canonical micronote forms (immediate use, temporary storage, and prospective memory aid), pinpointing the behaviors that are mismatched with current mobile support. Implications for improving the design of these systems are presented, culminating in a vision for integrated paper-digital micronote systems. This shifts the development focus away from trying to support the entire micronote lifecycle, emphasizing instead the different behaviors best supported by the different technologies.”
Copyrights may apply
Price, Kathleen J., Lin, Min, Feng, Jinjuan, Goldman, Rich, Sears, Andrew and Jacko, Julie A. (2004): Data Entry on the Move: An Examination of Nomadic Speech-Based Text Entry. In: Proceedings of the 8th ERCIM Workshop on User Interfaces for All 2004. p. 460. Available online
“Desktop interaction solutions are often inappropriate for mobile devices due to small screen size and portability needs. Speech recognition can improve interactions by providing a relatively hands-free solution that can be used in various situations. While mobile systems are designed to be transportable, few have examined the effects of motion on mobile interactions. We investigated the effect of motion on automatic speech recognition (ASR) input for mobile devices. We examined speech recognition error rates (RER) with subjects walking or seated, while performing text input tasks and the effect of ASR enrollment conditions on RER. RER were significantly lower for seated conditions. There was a significant interaction between enrollment and task conditions. When users enrolled while seated, but completed walking tasks, RER increased. In contrast, when users enrolled while walking, but completed seated tasks, RER decreased. These results suggest changes in user training of ASR systems for mobile and seated usage.”
Copyrights may apply
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Mar 12th, 2010
Changes to this page (author)
26 Feb 2010: Enabled abstracts to be shown on Min Lin's author page.12 May 2008: Author was edited 12 May 2008: Author was edited
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28 Apr 2003: Added the author to the bibliography
