Alphabetically biased virtual keyboards are easier to use - Layout does matter

Virtual keyboard layouts have been optimized for expert users with no consideration of novice users' ease of locating individual keys. This paper presents a new layout produced by means of a Metropolis algorithm with an added alphabetical bias term to the previous Fitts-digraph energy function. At a small cost of expert's performance, the new layout with alphabetical tendency offered 9% improvement to novice user's performance. Copyright © 2012 ACM, Inc.