Spellcheck Pusher

Improve spellchecking experience

Master Project | Year: 2017

Have you ever thought about spellchecking system continues to interrupt typing flow? Sometimes I just want to correct all my spelling mistakes at one time after my paragraph comes to an end. However the spell checker will pop out to show some spelling suggestions or just replace my mistakes automatically while I am still typing.

User Research and Problem Statement

Users need more flexibility on deciding when to correct their spelling errors without being interrupted.

This is a project I did during my master. The professor just gave us a topic: Can the spellchecking experience be enhanced? At first it blew my mind, I never really pay attention to spellchecking before. But frankly, we use it most of the time during typing. So I am of course the user in this case, although I can’t represent every user but since this is just a personal project and I didn’t have so much resources to conduct proper user research, I decided to start from myself, conducting a contextual interview with myself.

To start off, I opened the Notebook app on my phone, start to type a sentence. Like the image attached below, when I was typing, a small black box constantly showing up to suggest words for me trying to correct my spelling. If I press space, it automatically replaces the word I typed and put what the phone thought I am going to say. This really annoyed me! So from this small context, I realize the spell checking system continues to interrupt typing flow.

Ideate and Design Process

Design Version 1: My idea is, spelling mistakes in article will be remarked as a solid(3D) materials. When one tap on the trigger for spell check. It will act like a coin pusher to push spelling mistakes to another layer. So one has an independent and clean layer for spell checking. After finish the spell checking, one can tap on the trigger again to push the corrections back to original layer. In this way, users can have autonomy over when to use spellchecking.

Design Version 2: In second design version, I thought deeper about various situations. For example, in the full paragraph, when there are errors happen in close positions. Consider on swiping to another page, how do they show and display order afterward.

Well it should be enough for the course. But then I decided to go back to the ideate process. To see if this pusher idea is the best solution or if there are more solutions. I tried to broaden the project again.
I asked myself why using spellchecking system? Because I made spelling errors. Why I made spelling errors? Because I didn’t learn or memorize the word right.

From that, I found another insight:

How might we reduce spelling error, in other point of view, how might we enhance memorizing the correct spelling?

Design Version 3: Therefore, in the third design version, the spell checking system doesn’t replace the word automatically. It suggests three most likely spelling in the list. User have to choose it, once they chose it, the letter is animated. Micro animation and micro interaction were used in it. These micro animation and interaction might seem to be small but they increase more user engagement. I hypothesize that user engage more on the spelling correction itself, can enhance the learning experience.

Prototype and further thought

Watch prototype vedio here: Demo link