Visual Features of the Touchscreen Keyboard Guide Attention and Text Entry Behavior: An Eye-Tracking Study

摘要

Text entry via the smartphone touchscreen is an increasingly important means of communication. However, there is an offset between the intended landing location and the actual touch location, which reduces the accuracy of text entry. The present study found that at least two visual features of the soft smartphone keyboards in the market may have an effect on touch behavior. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether symbol shape and key border affect the distribution of attention and user's touch behavior. Four soft keyboards were designed to record the touch location while simultaneously using the eye tracker to capture the gaze data. The results show that the usability score of bordered keys is better than that of borderless keys, but the touch accuracy of bordered keys is poorer than that of borderless keys. In addition, the center of attention is not consistent with the touch location. The results of this research can be used as a reference for the design of the soft keyboard interface to reduce the error of text entry on the smartphone.