Scott Jenson explains his research into mobile text editing at Google, detailing how editing on mobile devices is surprisingly difficult and error-prone due to how mobile interfaces copied the desktop metaphor of cursor positioning and text selection without a mouse or menu bar.

This issue forces imprecise tapping gestures, overloaded with different functions like cursor placement, selection, and menu access. Jenson conducted a study confirming these issues and then created a prototype called Eloquent that reimagines mobile text editing with improved cursor control through dragging, a new "drag press" gesture for text selection, and streamlined menus. In short, he demonstrates a potential solution to this "invisible problem" of poor mobile text editing experiences.

Key points:

• Android and iOS copied desktop text editing without a mouse, overloading tap gestures for multiple actions

• Users frequently make mistakes with cursor positioning, selection, clipboard usage

• Text editing was considered "good enough" so little research was done to improve it

The Eloquent Prototype Solution

• Simplified cursor placement, treating all taps as drags

• Magnifier visualization over the cursor

• "Drag press" gesture for text selection

• Combined gestures for selecting text and accessing menus

• Animations to reinforce and teach the new interaction model

Highlights:

With the extremely talented Olivier Bau, together we created a prototype called Eloquent, which offers a much simpler solution.

Text editing on mobile was considered 'good enough.' Since people weren’t complaining, there was little motivation to improve it.