designing a press and swipe type single layered bangla soft keyboard for android devices
DESCRIPTION
Development of text entry speed and accuracy is the key concern for designing and evaluating a soft keyboard. Bangla language has large collection of characters and it is hard to design a single layered fixed layout keyboard to provide high-performance in today’s small mobile device. The traditional soft keyboards available in the market are multi-layered and menu based hierarchical keyboard which offer poor text entry speed. This presentation of associated paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of a fixed layout single layered press and swipe type soft keyboard. Analysis of the comfort zone and movement of fingers, placement of characters and keys based on monograph, implementation on android platform and evaluation comparing with QWERTY keyboard have been described.TRANSCRIPT
Designing A Press and Swipe Type Single Layered Bangla Soft Keyboard for
Android Devices
Presented ByKaidul IslamDept. Of Computer Science & EngineeringKhulna University of Engineering and Technology
This paper is authored by
Kaidul IslamDept. of Computer Science & Engineering,Khulna University of Engineering and Technologyhttp://kaidul.web44.net/
Bishnu SarkerLecturer, Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering,Khulna University of Engineering and Technologyhttp://www.kuet.ac.bd/cse/bishnu/
Abstract & Goal• Development of text entry speed and accuracy
is the key concern• Bangla language has a large collection of
characters & symbols– Most are multi-layered and menu based hierarchical– Hard to design a single layered keyboard
• Goal – Develop a fixed layout single layered press and swipe type soft keyboard
• This paper describes– Design, Implementation & Evaluation of proposed
keyboard– Comparison with other layout(s)
Background Analysis
• Numerous remarkable researches have been conducted based on– Data-mining– Finger and character frequency– Text-to-Image replacement
• Bijoy keyboard, Bangla inscript keyboard of MS, QWERTY layout for Bangla and some others
• But performance, speed and accuracy is still a question!!
Background Analysis
• QWERTY is a probably a done-deal due to large world-wide user base and scientific significance of design for English, but not for Bangla.– English has only 26 characters– Bangla has almost 70 in total which are
impossible to place
Background Analysis
Design
• A more practical square shape is more practical for graphic design and still gives sufficient flexibility for optimization
• Intension is to arrange all key in one layer.
• Tradeoff is – tiny key will create lack of accuracy and discomfort
Design
Design
Design• Arrange the letter in a
proper order based on char. freq – monograph, diagraph or develop a proper algorithm is a challenging task– User experiment didn’t
yield any confidential result
• So, we arranged them in our own fashion and based on empirical verification
Design
Bangla Character Frequency
Design• Algorithm on Rearranging the key
level:1. Take all enlisted letters &
symbols of frequency chart into a stack
2. Pick a letter from the top of the stack and place it in the most comfortable zone available on the corresponding key. If it is already in the desired place, then skip this step otherwise replace with the character of most comfortable zone.
3. Mark the popped letter and zone
4. Repeat step 2 and 3 until stack is empty
Fig: User Comfort zone of Finger Movement. The lower the Value, the best the zone is.Middle > top > bottom > right > left
Design
Skeleton of Proposed Keyboard Layout
Implementation
• Developed for world most popular Linux based OS Android platform
• Extensive Knowledge on Android IME Lifecycles
• No need to code from scratch level• Based on Open Source and free
project– Android GingerBread Keyboard by
Steven Lin– S9 Keyboard by Gilbert
Implementation
Keyboard in Portrait Orientation
• Prediction and Candidate View• Quick Fixing• Learning• Additional Popup Selection & Key
Preview• Multi-Tapping
Implementation: Features
Implementation: Features
Prediction Text on Candidate View
• Prediction and Candidate View• Quick Fixing• Learning• Additional Popup Selection & Key
Preview• Multi-Tapping
Implementation: Features
• Prediction and Candidate View• Quick Fixing• Learning– Add word(s) by long pressing on
Candidate view to Binary dictionary
• Additional Popup Selection & Key Preview
• Multi-Tapping
Implementation: Features
• Prediction and Candidate View• Quick Fixing• Learning• Additional Popup Selection & Key
Preview• Multi-Tapping
Implementation: Features
Implementation: Features
Popup Selection and Key Preview
• Prediction and Candidate View• Quick Fixing• Learning• Additional Popup Selection & Key
Preview• Multi-Tapping– Like old hard keyboard– Pressing one time gives middle letter,
two times gives upper, three times gives lower.......
Implementation: Features
Outcome
Evaluation
• Laws to evaluate and verify typing speed, movement latency, reaction time for decision making– Fitts’s Law– Hick-Hyman Law
• Time per Character, (WPM) word per minute
• User Experiment
Evaluation
• Laws to evaluate and verify typing speed, movement latency, reaction time for decision making– Fitts’s Law– Hick-Hyman Law
• Time per Character, (WPM) word per minute
• User Experiment
User Experiment
• 10 correspondents– advance Android users of at least 1 year– Use Bangla Keyboards to write blogs and
update Facebook status– Trained for 15 sessions each belongs to
10 minutes
User Experiment: Our vs. QWERTY
User Experiment: Error Rate
Future Plan
• Tradeoff between small display unit and text entry performance– Rigorous research and development needed
• Letter distribution and arrangement can be further developed by– Diagraph-Trigraph, Data Mining, Machine
Learning
• Prompt it as most promising, adaptive and versatile layout for Bangla.
Thank you!