© Authors 2017, All Rights Reserved
INTERACT 2017 Adjunct Proceedings
Probabilistic Modeling of Swarachakra
Keyboard for Improved Touch Accuracy
Nikhil Wani
1
, Adarsh Patodi
2
and Sumit Singh Yadav
3
1
Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune, India
nikhil.wani14@vit.edu
1
2
ITM University, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India
3
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, Mumbai, India
{adarshpatodi
2
, ssysumitsingh
3
}@gmail.com
Abstract. We present a probabilistic machine learning approach to
reduce touch errors on an Indic script keyboard – Swarachakra. As of
now the model is built purely based on the keyboard model, which
extends to a probabilistic model, and is functionally independent of the
language model. It is learned using 18,240 recorded touch inputs for
which it uses a Naive Bayes classifier and assigns an adapted probability
distribution to each of the 39 class labels, i.e. the keys on the keyboard.
We show that a comparative reduction of error rate by 7.47% against
the Non-Probabilistic model and 1.15%-3.15% against the baseline
Swarachakra model was obtained when modeled using a probabilistic
approach. Looking into the future, a hybrid model with incorporation of
a language model will be designed to factor in with the keyboard model
which may further meet user specific needs.
Keywords: Touchscreen text input, Machine learning, Classification.
1 Introduction
In this paper, we propose a data-driven probabilistic approach to touch. We
treat the problem at the intersection of a HCI approach and a Machine
learning task where we are interested in assigning the correct probability value
to the user input touch by mapping it to the intended touch input. Given that
the text input in Indic scripts often involve typing a consonant and a vowel in
combination and handling of the ‘chakra’, i.e. a circular input that appears on
touch [2], is effective in context of the Indic keyboard, makes the first touch of
the chakra naturally important. In recent analysis study, [6] reported an
initial moderately high error rate of 13-18% on average which stabilizes to 6-
8% as user session keep increasing and also suggest room for improvement in
the corrected error rates. We identify that the challenge arises when the user