Testing the efficacy of an Indic script virtual keyboard: Swarachakra

Abstract

Indian text input is an area which is now being studied by not only language experts but designers and developers. Since a decade there is work in progress for designs that are intended to develop easy and efficient keyboard for different Indian Languages scripts. Swarachakra (for android) is one novel attempt to resolve this problem. In our studies we found that alphabetical keyboard layout performed better than the Inscript layout for Devanagari Script. This case study discusses the evaluation and evolution of Swarachakra as virtual keyboard. It talks about the various degrees of usability testing which has been done to check its efficacy. User group included were students, adults and elder people with literacy level varying from graduate to low literate. The results of the study shows that with minimal training, a user is able to achieve acceptable comfort and speed with the logical design based keyboard.