Design, Implementation And Usability Evaluation Of An IME Theme Editor

In recent years, with the rise of mobile Internet technology, various mobileInternet applications is used by the hundreds of millions of users. In order to meetthe requirements of customer to input Chinese characters quickly, several IME(Input Method Editor) applications emerge and develop rapidly. With thecontinuous improvement of user requirements, the function of IME is not only thesimple input of Chinese characters; several additional features are added to IMEs.Skin is an important characteristic of IME applications; its purpose is to satisfy theusers’ growing requirements of friendly interface and customized interface.In the process of producing skins of IME, producers need to know the skinfile’s format to create a skin, and skin file’s format is often complex and difficult tounderstand. Therefore, in order to improve the efficiency of the professional skinmakers to make the skin and to meet the needs of some normal users to makepersonalized skin, the thesis project focused on developing an IME theme editoraiming at IFlyTek IME which is a popular voice IME in China. Through theanalysis of skin file’s format and loading process, the editor simulates an IMEinterface in personal computer which is similar with the IME interface in mobilephone. It is convenient for user to edit the skin in computer to make personalizedskin. As to professional skin producers, the editor can greatly improve theefficiency of skin production and testing.The theme editor can be divided into five modules: data management module,parser module, serializer module, graphical components module and front endmodule. These modules’ functions and designs would be introduced in detail in thethesis. The thesis employs the traditional water flow model of software engineeringmethod. Through requirement analysis, outline design, detailed design,implementation and testing these five stages, the theme editor’s developmentprocess is finished then. The thesis uses UML tools to build models in requirementanalysis phase, outline design phase and detailed design phase. The Java language isused to implement the theme editor. Then the functional testing and performancetesting is implemented to test the theme editor. After the development work is done,online questionnaires are used to evaluate the usability of the theme editor.