Design and evaluation of Devanagari virtual keyboards for touch screen mobile phones

  • Authors:
  • Anirudha Joshi;Girish Dalvi;Manjiri Joshi;Prasad Rashinkar;Aniket Sarangdhar

  • Affiliations:
  • IDC, IIT Bombay;IDC, IIT Bombay;IDC, IIT Bombay;IDC, IIT Bombay;IDC, IIT Bombay

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Lack of an easy and efficient text input mechanism in Indic scripts has been a barrier to large-scale adoption of ICTs in India. We present findings from a usability evaluation of three keyboard designs for Indic scripts for touch screen phones. The design of one of the keyboards is based on the frequency of characters, while the designs of the other two are based on the logical structure of the script. We evaluated the keyboards with participants with low-level of education through a first-time usability test and a longitudinal usability test. One of the logically structured keyboards started out with significantly higher success rate, typing speed, and lesser errors than the other two. The longitudinal test involving text input of 500 words did not conclusively prove that either design was better. Our study establishes benchmarks for text input speeds, errors and ratings for the initial learning phase for text input in Marathi among less educated users.