Ergonomic design of a computer keyboard layout for the Jawi script

Due to unavailability of a computer keyboard layout for the Jawi script, users of this script make use of the Arabic keyboard layout for typing texts in this particular script. Obviously, the layout of the Arabic script keyboard is not designed for the ancient writing of the Jawi script. Keeping this in view, a research was conducted to design a new keyboard layout suitable for the users of the Jawi script from an ergonomics point of view, and the outcome of the research is presented in this study. In order to design the Jawi script keyboard layout, the relative finger strengths of both male and female subjects were determined experimentally. The relative frequency of the characters and two special characters (full-stop and comma) that appeared in the script were determined by counting their presence in a large number of texts in the script that represent the workload of the fingers. The keys were rearranged in such a way that the workload of each finger was approximately matched with its relative strength. The newly proposed arrangement of the keys was not much different compared to the Arabic script keyboard layout, and hence it is convenient for users to switch between the layouts.