A Story of Two Surveys: for the Advancement of Sinhalese Mobile Text Entry Research

Abstract

This paper presents two surveys: a literature survey on the current progress on Sinhalese mobile text entry research and a user survey on how Sri Lankans experience Sinhalese mobile text entry. The first survey concludes that Sinhalese mobile text entry is limited in scope and size compared to western text entry research. The second survey attempts to bridge this gap by providing deep insight into aspects in Sinhalese mobile text entry such as language switching, using English within Sinhalese e.g. mixed-mode and Singlish, and the popularity of various input modalities, keyboard vendors, and keyboard layouts. This is also the first research publication that unveils the current state-of-the-art in Sinhalese mobile text entry, along with user-preferences such as using autocorrect, glide-typing, and speech. Results from this survey deepens our understanding of the Sinhalese mobile text entry domain resulting in a stronger empirical footing and more innovative Sinhalese mobile text entry solutions.