Development And Verification Of The Prompt Soft Keyboards Based On Chinese Spelling Inputs

How to improve the performance of text input has been the important concern inengineering psychology field. Text input is an important part of computer operation, one way tocomplete the daily work and leisure entertainment, every people spend a lot of time to completethe work about text inputting, therefore, improve the performance of text input has importantpractical significance.In recent years, with handheld mobile devices (such as smart phones, tablets, etc.) popular,the soft keyboard input was gradually implemented on touch screen devices, this makes theoptimization of the soft keyboard become the focus problem of the researchers.In order to effectively improve the performance of Chinese character typing, the currentstudy developed two kinds of prompt soft keyboards based on Chinese spelling inputs: onehighlights letters in bold and black, and the other in color. Moreover, we carried out an empiricalexperiment to verify the effect of these two prompt soft keyboards (compared to normal softkeyboard) on typing performance and satisfaction, and discuss operation characteristics and rulesof the soft keyboard.The current study consists of two parts. The first one states the development of the twoprompt soft keyboards; the second part is an empirical study. Empirical study included threeexperiments, among them, the experiment one verify the superiority of prompt soft keyboard bycomparing the operating performance and subjective evaluation of them; Experiment two is totest the advantage of prompt soft keyboards in the condition of limited time. Experiment three isbased on experiment two, to test the advantage of prompt soft keyboards for low typing speedsubjects, in the condition of limited time.The current study developed two kinds of prompt soft keyboards based on Chinese spellinginputs: one highlights letters in bold and black,empirical experiments show that:(1) Prompt soft keyboards based on Chinese spelling inputs is better, especially for subjectswith low typing skill. (2) There is no significant difference between two prompted soft keyboards in operatingperformance and subjective evaluation.The prompt soft keyboards can be directly applied in Chinese spelling inputs, it’s a newidea for the design of the soft keyboard, it is significant in theory and practice.