Designing a Better Touch Keyboard

Sammanfattning: The growing market of smartphone and tablet devices has made touch screens a big part of how people interact with technology today. The standard virtual keyboard used on these devices is based on the computer keyboard – a design that may not be very well suited for touch screens. This thesis seeks to answer whether there are alternative ways to design virtual touch keyboards. An alternative design may require training to use, but the user should be able to use it viably after a reasonable amount of practice. Optimally, the user should also have the potential to reach a higher level of efficiency than what is possible on the standard touch keyboard design. Analysis is done by researching current and previous attempts at alternative keyboard designs, and by implementing an own prototype based on observations made on the researched designs. The thesis concludes that there is an interest in solving issues encountered in this area, and that there is good potential in building viable virtual keyboards using alternative design paradigms.