Indic Script : Class room project of HP Labs, Bangalore, 3 months.

Project Brief: To design a data entry system for form filling in Indic Script. HP Labs had come up with a device with touch-screen that could directly take input from the user to the database making the whole system work faster. We had to design forms and data entry mechanism in Indic Script. Also they wanted alternatives input mechanisms to enter short text in Indic Script with ease of use.

Process:

•  Initial Research

It was started with studying the history of Indian Languages and finally selecting two languages we thought we could do maximum justice to which were Hindi and Gujarati.

Morphology, typography, structure was studied for the two languages and observations

•  User Study

We then developed a pilot test, selected randomly chosen users and tested for simple and complex words.

A more structured test was devised that consisted of many sections each section to check under constraint like time, space, with boxes and without. The flow and direction while writing was also captured with the help of a camcorder. We conducted around 40 tests of skilled and semi-skilled people from schools, neighbourhood and villages.

Analysis:-

It was difficult to write in boxes.

The boxes were too small to fit In the ‘matras' generally used in both Hindi and

Gujarati. Moreover, Hindi used half- consonants that were inconsistently fit into boxes.

Next, we found out how we could chunk words so that individual chunks could be accommodated in a box. There were six chunks in total for all words in Hindi.

Prototyping:

Solutions were given on the best ways to fit chunks in boxes. Finally alternate modes of text entry were also sought.

I devised a solution that was based on trackball input with no touch screen. One could use the right trackball for the consonants and the left trackball for vowels to move through the matrix on consonants. Also there are buttons for entering the alphabets as half or full. The prototypes were created in Flash.