Design and Evaluation of Semi-Transparent Keyboards on a Touchscreen Tablet

Abstract

As tablet computers are hosting more productivity applications, efficient text entry is becoming more important. A soft keyboard, which is the primary text entry interface for tablets, however, often competes with applications for the limited screen space. A promising solution to this problem may be a semi-transparent soft keyboard (STK), which can share the screen with an application. A few commercial STK products are already available, but research questions about the STK design have not been explored in depth yet. Therefore, we conducted three experiments to answer 1) the effect of the transparency level on usability, 2) exploration of diverse design options for an STK, and 3) the effect of an STK on the different text caret positions. The results imply that STKs with 50% opacity showed a balanced performance; well-designed STKs were acceptable in both content reading and typing situations; which could reach 90-100% of an opaque keyboard in terms of overall performance; and the text caret could intrude the STK down to the number row.

The effects of dynamic prompt and background transparency of hover feedback design on the user interface of shopping websites

“…The results also indicated that the participants felt no difference at 0 and 25% transparency. The results also agree with Kim and Lee's (2018) assertion that transparency below 50% would have little impact on user experience. In addition, all participants found that both dynamic prompt effects and the degree of background transparency of hover feedback designs were interesting and trustworthy.…”

“…That is, the greater the percentage, the more transparent it is. Kim and Lee (2018) argued that transparency can expand the presentation of information over the limited screen size, and that transparency higher than 50% will affect users' reading, considering the screen size. In a virtual environment interface, operations over a translucent map are much more accessible than opaque maps (Chen and Chen, 2019).…”

Exploring the effects of virtual annotation background display mode and transparency through a 360-degree panorama approach to online shopping

“…That is, the smaller the percentage, the less transparent it is. Kim and Lee (2018) argued that pop-up windows with transparency effects can reduce the occlusion of the underlying background of the interface. Early research found that windows with reasonable transparency can expand the presentation of information on a limited screen size (Harrison et al, 1995).…”