Chinese Keyboard Layout Design Based on Polyphone Disambiguation and a Genetic Algorithm

This study suggests a new keyboard layout to efficiently type in Chinese characters. The layout was based on a statistical analysis of Chinese corpus and was derived from a genetic algorithm. In the semantic analysis, 6 million Chinese characters were transcribed into typing script. Macros of polyphone were disambiguated from either the context or the presence probabilities in the training data. Relative frequencies of single letter and letter pair were counted to investigate on tapping workload and sequence. In the genetic algorithm, five ergonomics criteria—tapping workload distribution, hand alternation, finger alternation, avoidance of big steps, and hit direction—were applied to evaluate keyboard layout alternatives. The result showed that the proposed layout is 43% better than the QWERTY layout in terms of the weighted sum of the five ergonomic criteria.