An optimized single-finger Arabic keyboard layout

Abstract

Cellular phones and other hand-held devices are now extensively used to write emails, notes and long texts. However, the arrangement of keys in the current keyboards is not optimized to facilitate rapid and ergonomic typing. In this paper, we aim to optimize the Arabic keyboard layout for applications that predominantly use a single pointer. The single-finger keyboard layout problem can be modeled in terms of the Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP), which can be solved using metaheuristic algorithms. To adapt the problem to the requirements of optimizing the single-finger keyboard, we used three measures in our objective function: the distance between pairs of letters, a weight for each row in the keyboard, and the hit direction of the finger. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach with two crossover types (2-point and modified uniform crossovers) and two different mutation operators (swap and insertion) was developed and thoroughly tested. The performance of the Genetic Algorithm was also compared against a Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm using the same objective function. Moreover, we developed a Memetic Algorithm combining GA and SA to maximize the chances of obtaining good solutions. We compared our resulting optimized keyboard layouts with different existing and proposed layouts. The comparison results show that our keyboard layouts are more efficient, in terms of the optimization criteria considered, than the tested layouts. Finally, the performance of our keyboards was tested by virtually estimating the speed of typing. Our keyboards also outperform other layouts in terms of the measured typing speed. The details of the algorithms and the experimental results are reported in this paper.

Usability Evaluation of Optimized Single-Pointer Arabic Keyboards Using Eye Tracking

“…Compared to the Genetic Algorithm and using the same objective function proposed in [35], the best result produced by the SA was 190.3687, which is very close to 190.3563, the best result produced by the GA. Moreover, the average of the solutions produced by the SA was slightly better than the average produced by the GA experiments.…”

Analisis penggunaan aplikasi arabic pad sebagai media menulis dan mengedit teks berbahasa arab pada mahasiswa UIN Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten

“…Penelitian (Sarma, 2012) dan (Kamaruddin et al, 2010) serta (Sarma, 2012) juga (El-Ramly & El Hamalawy, 1980) membuat konsep keyboard untuk memudahkan dalam penulisan arab, angka dengan desain efisiensi keyboard yang ada. Sedangkan (Hosny et al, 2014) mengoptimalkan tata letak keyboard Arab untuk aplikasi yang sebagian besar menggunakan satu pointer. Masalah tata letak keyboard satu jari dapat dimodelkan dalam bentuk Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP).…”

“…Arabic Pad secara tampilan seperti aplikasi "notepad", namun hasil ketikan dari keyboard akan menjadi huruf arab secara langsung yang lengkap dan dapat disertai harokatnya. Arabic pad merupakan adalah editor sederhana yang didesain untuk menulis text arab, khususnya untuk windows yang nonArabic dengan ukurannya hanya 49 KB, hal ini akan lebih mempermudah kepada user untuk melakukan pengetikan huruf Arab, karena penggunaan aplikasi ini bersifat visual dan easy to use sehingga tanpa harus menghafalkan huruf yang terletak pada keyboard seperti pada penelitian yang dilakukan oleh (Sarma, 2012), (Kamaruddin et al, 2010), (Sarma, 2012), (El-Ramly & El Hamalawy, 1980) dan (Hosny et al, 2014).…”