Fat Finger Syndrome Solution Found with Finite Element Analysis: Samsung employs realistic simulation to design mobile device keypads for fewer typos

If you can't blame Spell Check or Auto Correct for mistyped messages, blame your thumbs. As mobile phones grow smaller or the screens grown bigger, the keypads tend to become smaller or obsolete. Unfortunately, that means typing a quick text message becomes a lot harder.

There is good news for those of us with "fat finger syndrome" as engineers at Samsung used Abaqus from SIMULIA to develop finite element models of both a human fingertip and a device key to simulate user input and identify the variables that lead to typos. By utilizing a Python script in Abaqus, the engineers were able to automate a number of their tasks to reach a solution in a timely manner. The result: a keyboard layout which significantly reduced the amount of error from 35% to 7% in the user’s intended input.

To study thumb-strike angle variety, 21 volunteers from the Samsung research facility were photographed as they worked the keypad of the prototype device.

Read more about Samsung's methods to alleviate fat finger syndrome from the recent edition of SIMULIA Community News.