Towards a better mobile keyboard
Virtual keyboard is one of the core software for mobile OS. It’s also the main entry point for modern communication, such as chat, SMS, email, blog, comment, etc. With Apple introducing the first iPhone in 2007, everyone started to get familiar with the current standard of software keyboard that supports multi-touch, auto correction, easy-to-use, etc. It’s the part of the modern smart phone that just works. However, both iOS and Android still supports customized keyboard that allows the third-party developers to continuously improve it.
As one of the main input methods on mobile phones, the improvements are mostly around the speed of “inputting”, while keeping the error rate low. It starts from improving the software performance itself (memory usage, loading latency, etc.) to the actual typing speed. There are many features that become popular among the top keyboards (GBoard, SwiftKey, etc.). Customized layouts, single-handed mode, swipe typing, and more advanced gesture typing greatly enhance the typing speed itself, while auto-correction keeps the error rate low. SwiftKey even allows bilingual typing, that greatly reduces the latency of switching languages for multi-language usage. While machine learning technique improves, the keyboard becomes smarter as well. It initially only suggested the most frequently used words. Now it can make text prediction based on initial keystrokes, to suggest the full text sequence by predicting the user intention, etc. In the best scenario, you only need one touch or swipe to finish the whole typing sequence.
While the implementation keeps improving in each category, there are also more advanced thinking towards even faster typing experience. Apps, that provides its own customized keyboard, can leverage context information better. For example, Gmail launched smart reply that suggests responses based on the email conversation, etc. Many chat or search apps support speech to text conversion for a more mobile-friendly UX. While suggestions become personal based on historical usage, some apps even allow cross-device input for more frequent multi-device scenarios nowadays. Overall, we are seeing the keyboard become more contextual, personalized and universal in the future.
While keyboards strive to become faster, they also try to be more expressive. Emoji has evolved to be part of the online language in the Internet era. Third-party keyboards compete to extend the default emoji sets offered by iOS/Android, learn the trending emoji phrases, and suggest users with the best emoji expressions, etc. As the old adage says “A picture is worth a thousand words”. GIFs expand emoji with more powerful expressions. Companies like GIPHY make fast search of GIFs very easy on keyboards. It’s now an essential experience of popular social/chat apps. Google tries to empower users beyond GIFs/emojis, with everything they can search on it. GBoard allows you to search and send anything from Google, including nearby places, news, videos, etc. Bitmoji takes the emoji concept even further, that allows you to express the feeling with your own avatar. The personalized emoji-based images create a lot of different ways for users to express themselves.
With the evolution of efficiency and expressiveness, software keyboards are becoming one of the most important software for modern input devices. It is the entry point of communication, the initial layer that captures the user’s intention, and a personalized interface to other software, etc. We will continuously see more innovations in this category.
