Dynamic reconfigurable screen keyboard generation method using probe key test

As touch-screen mobile phones pour into the market, demands for reusing existing mobile applications by adding a touch-screen UI are increasing. Up until this point, the method of defining a single screen keyboard and redirecting touch inputs to key inputs was used. However, this method diminishes the efficiency of touch-screens because a fixed-layout is applied to every application even though different keys are used for different UI states of an application. This study proposes a method that investigates the type of keys used in an application during run-time using the probe key and dynamically configures the layout of screen keyboards. Test results of the proposed method showed that an optimized touch-screen UI was generated every time the UI state of an application changed.