Title: A novel soft keyboard for touchscreen phones: QWERT

Authors: Yanshan Wang

Addresses: School of Industrial Management Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, 136-713, Republic of Korea

Abstract: The foremost interface on touch smartphones is the information input module using soft keyboards. In this paper, a novel soft keyboard called QWERT is proposed for touchscreen-based smartphones. The users can interact with phones via finger gestures of tapping or sliding when input text by using the QWERT. In doing so, the interactions between users and smartphones will be faster and easier. An experiment carried out on inexperienced human subjects shows that they can learn very fast due to their familiarities with QWERTY. A simulation experiment based on a cognitive architecture, ACT-R, was also conducted to predict the movement time (MT) of experienced human subjects. The simulation results show that the MT using QWERT outperforms other default keyboards. These outcomes imply that the novel QWERT is a viable option for touch smartphone users.

Keywords: QWERT; touchscreen; touch smartphones; soft keyboard; Android; user interaction; finger gestures; tapping; sliding; text inputting; human-machine interaction; HMI; simulation; cognitive architecture; movement time prediction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHFE.2013.059374

International Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics, 2013 Vol.2 No.4, pp.246 - 261

Received: 04 Jul 2013
Accepted: 29 Oct 2013
Published online: 30 Apr 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article