Windows Phone 8 Keyboard Secrets
Since the day Windows Phone 7 appeared, there were many compliments to its virtual keyboard, smart hints and fixes. Engadget called it "one of the best and most accurate virtual keyboards we've tried on any of the platforms." Gizmodo said: “The keyboard is boss”. Even the New York Times rated smart tips.
In Windows Phone 8, developers have set as their goal to make the keyboard even more intuitive, accurate and individual. In this article we would like to talk about the improvements that hit the latest release, and explain some of the mechanisms that provide the predictive technology that is causing a lot of interest.
On average, users print from 20 to 30 messages a day using their phones — more than 10,000 come out in a year. Of course, they make quite a few mistakes - according to a research by colleagues at Microsoft, in about every third word. Windows Phone 8 introduced Word Flow, an improved and renamed version of the Quick Correct feature, familiar to Windows Phone 7.5. It helps to prevent typing errors, for the correction of which time is spent, and allows you to concentrate on the really important thing - communication with close people.
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World Flow was designed to fit the way ordinary people talk to each other — and she knows everything, including the latest trends in pop culture and slang. Working on Word Flow, the developers reworked an array of 2.5 billion English words from various sources - dictionaries and the Internet. Unfortunately, space in the phone is limited, so for the correction and prompts Word Flow selected 600,000 of the most common words and phrases that people use most often.
As a result, already out of the box, the Windows Phone auto-patch system is 94% accurate. But each of us has our own style of communication, so Word Flow has a learning system that explores your communication habits and what you are writing about.
Creating a good keyboard is not an easy task. We all saw how smartphones made annoyingly stupid fixes. There is no need to go for evidence - just look at the Damn You Autocorrect site or recall numerous pictures in social networks.
In order to avoid the fate of the stars of such sites, Windows Phone must know a lot of words and understand what you are typing. Therefore, it has a built-in virtual dictionary, similar to the volume of Ozhegov or Dahl on your shelf. However, there is one key difference between them - the Windows Phone dictionary contains not only words, but also how often they are used by people on their mobile phones.
For example, imagine how someone starts typing “happ”. What word should phone suggest? The dictionary would say “Happen”, but statistically most often it’s about “Happy”.
The Office team has been researching the most frequently used words for over 20 years, providing similar functionality in Word and Outlook, and they have greatly helped in creating the first dictionaries for Windows Phone 7. Office uses a variety of sources, from linguistic studies to frequency analyzes of documents, books and the web - pages. And since “happy” is more often used with the word “happen”, Windows Phone offers “happy” as the first hint.
However, even a “smart” dictionary cannot avoid inappropriate hints and unwanted auto-corrections. This happens for two reasons.
First, it is imperative that the dictionary be relevant to what you are typing. A dictionary based only on words used in scientific texts and textbooks will not be able to give clues that are relevant to ordinary conversation (however, scientists all over the world would, of course, be happy about this turn of events). For example, typing "in", you would see "hydrogen" as the first clue.
The second thing that affects the quality of corrections is dependence on words that appeared before it. If you are typing “God,” you probably mean “Be healthy”, not “Be for”. Some words are quite simple to predict - for example, “Russian F” almost always means “Russian Federation”.
What word should be suggested next? To answer this question, Windows Phone 8 should not only know many words, but also the frequency with which people use them.
Windows Phone 8 is designed with both difficulties in mind. In ordinary life, people often use slang, substandard spelling and abbreviations. Therefore, to do with the dictionaries that are used in Microsoft Word, alas, will not work.
In solving this problem you have helped! Remember the little checkbox when you first turned on the phone (and in “Settings”) asking you to help improve the tips? When someone gave their permission, the phone collected anonymous information about the typed text - of course, without passwords, names of numbers and any other personal information.
In order to train the phone slang and pop culture, the developers have included Twitter and Wikipedia in the list of sources. True, they didn’t have a chance to stick themselves there all day long - special programs were written for this, which sought out new and frequently used words. Of course, the results had to be cleaned up with hands - including links and hashtags.
Searches for things, places, people and topics discussed by users helped to make hints and corrections more accurate - from Harry Potter (for example - Ravenclaw and Slytherin) to famous personalities (for example, Obama and Clooney). Of course, what is popular in the United States may mean nothing in Russia, so Word Flow has unique dictionaries for each language. Twitter and Wikipedia were very helpful in creating dictionaries for specific countries and dialects.
Another previously mentioned problem is the understanding of the context - which words are most likely to appear before and after the word you typed. In particular, the developers studied three words in context (they received the name "trigrams", from the eponymous Japanese sign consisting of three parts) in order to understand which are the best to offer. For example, if a user types “I love” and then “t” most likely, he means “you” - after all, we most often use phones to communicate with loved ones (of course, there are some people who will write “stool”, but they will be in a clear minority). Trigrams are great for such common phrases. But their use also means that Windows Phone understands - if you enter "Harry", you will probably enter "Potter" after that.
Another challenge for engineers was the problem of "fat finger". If a finger hits more than one letter when pressed - which happens often enough - which user exactly wanted to press?
The solution used in Windows Phone is to change the invisible “touch zone” (sensitive to the touch zone around each letter) as you type. When your finger touches this zone, a letter appears on the screen. The touch zone constantly changes its size depending on the word that, according to the keyboard, you are going to enter. The video will most clearly tell about it:
How does the phone know which letter zone needs to be done more? He uses the same dictionaries to help him decide which letter you are going to type next. In the case of the example “Happy Birthday”, after “Cdnm”, “the area around“ o ”will become larger, and around“ p ”and“ l ”less, since you most likely want enter exactly “o”. Many users continue to tell that typing on Windows Phone is easier than on other smartphones - the touch zone is one of the reasons. It looks like a simple change required serious scientific research - that is why Microsoft Research experts actively participated in creating the virtual keyboard. Learn more about their research here: research.microsoft.com/pubs/118375/paper-final.pdf
Finally, the time has come to talk about the most important part of the dictionary, which is completely empty when the phone first comes into your hands - a personalized dictionary. This is the place where the phone stores all the words and phrases that you use. As you type, he learns how you use the language. Subsequently, these data are used everywhere - both in the tips, and in the autocorrects, and in the work of the touch zones.
The result of all this work is the most intelligent keyboard among all smartphones - and the developers are not going to stop in their research. What do you think about the keyboard in Windows Phone?
In Windows Phone 8, developers have set as their goal to make the keyboard even more intuitive, accurate and individual. In this article we would like to talk about the improvements that hit the latest release, and explain some of the mechanisms that provide the predictive technology that is causing a lot of interest.
Introducing Word Flow
On average, users print from 20 to 30 messages a day using their phones — more than 10,000 come out in a year. Of course, they make quite a few mistakes - according to a research by colleagues at Microsoft, in about every third word. Windows Phone 8 introduced Word Flow, an improved and renamed version of the Quick Correct feature, familiar to Windows Phone 7.5. It helps to prevent typing errors, for the correction of which time is spent, and allows you to concentrate on the really important thing - communication with close people.
')
World Flow was designed to fit the way ordinary people talk to each other — and she knows everything, including the latest trends in pop culture and slang. Working on Word Flow, the developers reworked an array of 2.5 billion English words from various sources - dictionaries and the Internet. Unfortunately, space in the phone is limited, so for the correction and prompts Word Flow selected 600,000 of the most common words and phrases that people use most often.
As a result, already out of the box, the Windows Phone auto-patch system is 94% accurate. But each of us has our own style of communication, so Word Flow has a learning system that explores your communication habits and what you are writing about.
How it works
Creating a good keyboard is not an easy task. We all saw how smartphones made annoyingly stupid fixes. There is no need to go for evidence - just look at the Damn You Autocorrect site or recall numerous pictures in social networks.
In order to avoid the fate of the stars of such sites, Windows Phone must know a lot of words and understand what you are typing. Therefore, it has a built-in virtual dictionary, similar to the volume of Ozhegov or Dahl on your shelf. However, there is one key difference between them - the Windows Phone dictionary contains not only words, but also how often they are used by people on their mobile phones.
For example, imagine how someone starts typing “happ”. What word should phone suggest? The dictionary would say “Happen”, but statistically most often it’s about “Happy”.
The Office team has been researching the most frequently used words for over 20 years, providing similar functionality in Word and Outlook, and they have greatly helped in creating the first dictionaries for Windows Phone 7. Office uses a variety of sources, from linguistic studies to frequency analyzes of documents, books and the web - pages. And since “happy” is more often used with the word “happen”, Windows Phone offers “happy” as the first hint.
However, even a “smart” dictionary cannot avoid inappropriate hints and unwanted auto-corrections. This happens for two reasons.
First, it is imperative that the dictionary be relevant to what you are typing. A dictionary based only on words used in scientific texts and textbooks will not be able to give clues that are relevant to ordinary conversation (however, scientists all over the world would, of course, be happy about this turn of events). For example, typing "in", you would see "hydrogen" as the first clue.
The second thing that affects the quality of corrections is dependence on words that appeared before it. If you are typing “God,” you probably mean “Be healthy”, not “Be for”. Some words are quite simple to predict - for example, “Russian F” almost always means “Russian Federation”.
What word should be suggested next? To answer this question, Windows Phone 8 should not only know many words, but also the frequency with which people use them.
Designed for ordinary people.
Windows Phone 8 is designed with both difficulties in mind. In ordinary life, people often use slang, substandard spelling and abbreviations. Therefore, to do with the dictionaries that are used in Microsoft Word, alas, will not work.
In solving this problem you have helped! Remember the little checkbox when you first turned on the phone (and in “Settings”) asking you to help improve the tips? When someone gave their permission, the phone collected anonymous information about the typed text - of course, without passwords, names of numbers and any other personal information.
In order to train the phone slang and pop culture, the developers have included Twitter and Wikipedia in the list of sources. True, they didn’t have a chance to stick themselves there all day long - special programs were written for this, which sought out new and frequently used words. Of course, the results had to be cleaned up with hands - including links and hashtags.
Searches for things, places, people and topics discussed by users helped to make hints and corrections more accurate - from Harry Potter (for example - Ravenclaw and Slytherin) to famous personalities (for example, Obama and Clooney). Of course, what is popular in the United States may mean nothing in Russia, so Word Flow has unique dictionaries for each language. Twitter and Wikipedia were very helpful in creating dictionaries for specific countries and dialects.
Another previously mentioned problem is the understanding of the context - which words are most likely to appear before and after the word you typed. In particular, the developers studied three words in context (they received the name "trigrams", from the eponymous Japanese sign consisting of three parts) in order to understand which are the best to offer. For example, if a user types “I love” and then “t” most likely, he means “you” - after all, we most often use phones to communicate with loved ones (of course, there are some people who will write “stool”, but they will be in a clear minority). Trigrams are great for such common phrases. But their use also means that Windows Phone understands - if you enter "Harry", you will probably enter "Potter" after that.
Another challenge for engineers was the problem of "fat finger". If a finger hits more than one letter when pressed - which happens often enough - which user exactly wanted to press?
The solution used in Windows Phone is to change the invisible “touch zone” (sensitive to the touch zone around each letter) as you type. When your finger touches this zone, a letter appears on the screen. The touch zone constantly changes its size depending on the word that, according to the keyboard, you are going to enter. The video will most clearly tell about it:
How does the phone know which letter zone needs to be done more? He uses the same dictionaries to help him decide which letter you are going to type next. In the case of the example “Happy Birthday”, after “Cdnm”, “the area around“ o ”will become larger, and around“ p ”and“ l ”less, since you most likely want enter exactly “o”. Many users continue to tell that typing on Windows Phone is easier than on other smartphones - the touch zone is one of the reasons. It looks like a simple change required serious scientific research - that is why Microsoft Research experts actively participated in creating the virtual keyboard. Learn more about their research here: research.microsoft.com/pubs/118375/paper-final.pdf
Personalized dictionaries
Finally, the time has come to talk about the most important part of the dictionary, which is completely empty when the phone first comes into your hands - a personalized dictionary. This is the place where the phone stores all the words and phrases that you use. As you type, he learns how you use the language. Subsequently, these data are used everywhere - both in the tips, and in the autocorrects, and in the work of the touch zones.
The result of all this work is the most intelligent keyboard among all smartphones - and the developers are not going to stop in their research. What do you think about the keyboard in Windows Phone?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/163633/
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