FloodKey: increasing software keyboard keys by reducing needless ones without occultation

摘要

Floodkey is a software keyboard in which some keys are increased in size while needless ones are decreased. It uses a graph of sites that generates the keys. Each time a key is pressed, according to the probabilities of the key to be pressed, the sites are located by the Fruchterman-Reingold algorithm that maintains the topology of the keyboard. Then the keyboard appears with no overlapping as a weighted Voronoi diagram. A simulation shows a mean increase of 97% and 70% in size for the key to be pressed with and without the Fruchterman-Reingold algorithm. A preliminary usability test conducted with and without increasing the keys shows similar performance after 4 sessions of 3-minutes use. But the users found the combination between the Fruchterman-Reingold algorithm and the weighted Voronoi less pleasant.