On the efficiency issues of virtual keyboard design

Virtual keyboards are useful tools, which ease effortless entry of textual data and enable typing with alternative input hardware such as a single switch. Early virtual keyboards are designed similar to physical keyboards in terms of appearance. Since a physical keyboard is designed for tactile-use; the usability of the first virtual keyboards comes up short in utilization with pointing devices. For this reason, more useful virtual keyboards are proposed with improvements in modal and functional properties. In this study, we examine a couple of design issues for virtual keyboards to provide their efficient utilization with pointing devices. We analyze the effects of visual key layout to the performance of virtual keyboards in connection with the statistical properties of the target language´s vocabulary. We also propose a virtual keyboard design for a comfortable text entry experience based on our observations.