A Study of Korean Soft-keyboard Layout for One Finger Text Entry
Byung Don Kong, Seung-Kweon Hong, Seongsik Jo, Rohae Myung · IE interfaces · 2009
Recently, the use of soft-keyboard is widespread and increases, because various handheld devices were developed such as PDA, navigation, mobile phones with enhanced competence of touchscreen. The use of soft-keyboard requires different characteristics compared to traditional hard-keyboard like QWERTY keyboard: no standard character layout, one finger entry, and cognitive processing time. In this study, therefore, the optimal soft-keyboard layout for one finger text entry in touchscreen environment was investigated among 6 keyboard layouts which were developed based on traditional characteristic of Korean text and the usage frequency of both vowels and consonants. As a result, the interface with Korean text invention order like ‘ㄱㄴㄷㄹ’ or ‘ㅏㅑㅓㅕ’ was found to be better than the interface with usage frequency-based arrangement. Especially the vowels were most efficient when separated into two parts; located at the right-hand side and at right below the consonants. In conclusion, the keyboard layout with regard to the Korean text characteristic and the invention order was a more effective layout resulted from the minimum cognitive processing time.