Cyber Swarm optimization for general keyboard arrangement problem

[[abstract]]Traditional QWERTY keyboard has been known to be an ill design due to its low typing speed, fatigue-inducement, no reference to learnability, to name a few. Many researchers have put their effort on optimizing the character arrangement of the keyboard by taking into account the co-occurrence frequency of characters in words, typing ergonomics, and word disambiguation effectiveness. However, most of the existing works addressed the problem for a single objective instead of multiple ones, and the design of customized keyboards for motor-impaired users is often overlooked. In this paper, we propose a general mathematical model that integrates varying keyboard arrangement context. A Cyber Swarm method considering multiple objectives is proposed and it can create additional benefits that cannot be obtained by traditional methods. Our Cyber Swarm method accommodates ergonomic criteria and disambiguation/prediction effectiveness simultaneously. Experimental results manifest that the Cyber Swarm keyboard outperforms several benchmark keyboards and other competing algorithms. We also show an illustrative example for preliminary keyboard shape design which could be very useful in customized keyboard production for motor-impaired users whose physical capacity has been evaluated a priori. Finally, an empirical experiment involving human subjects is performed in order to analyze the feedbacks from humans' experiences in using the new keyboard layouts. Relevance to industry: Using the proposed general framework for keyboard arrangement, various scenarios (for example, single-character or multi-character keys, single-finger or multi-finger typing) raised in industrial production can be all taken into account without the hassle to change solution methods for different settings. Hence, the time and costs in industrial production for customized keyboard is significantly reduced. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.[[note]]SC