Thinkie

Thinkie is a mobile Thinking-Aloud app on iPhone with dictation support (ASR - automatic speech recognition) for capturing the subject's talk and on iPad with an editing interface presenting both the session video and its transcript, thus helping the researcher in correcting, annotating and analyzing the thinking-aloud session.

Thinking-aloud is a proven method for exploring the intellectual work of a person who is solving a problem. Having the person talk delivers content of the working memory. The resulting record is transcribed and analyzed. A main application area among many others is HCI (Human Computer Interaction). There the main aim is to find out how users succeed in handling a system for achieving their aims, and to improve the system and its interface so that humans encounter less problems during interaction with it. As thinking-aloud studies should reflect the unbiased thinking of competent users scientists mostly meet their subjects in their everyday environment. During this field work they are on the road. They are better off with light and mobile technical equipment.

Thinkie 2.0 adapts to IOS 8 and CloudKit use. Both protocol texts and videos are stored in a private cloud database, normally owned by the researcher. The app handling was simplified, the design restructured. Thinkie 2.0 comes nearer to use in real thinking-aloud studies. The interaction with Siri’s speech recognition still remains a weak point because of limited time spots (now 40 sec). It hinders free talking by imposing a dictation behavior.

Thinkie 2.0 was tested on iPhone 6 and iPad 2.