When keyboards were first designed, they took into account English speakers.The Lebanese had to adapt to it, and Arabic has a few letters that don’t exist in Latin, they recreated these out of numbers. This is called Latin Arabic. Today, it is the most used chat language in Lebanon. But it comes with compromise. The numbers that they use are on the 2nd page of the keyboard. Each time they want to write, they have to go back and forth on the keyboard. Losing 2sec/ number fetched. 1min/30words. If they are heavy chatters, that goes up to 30min lost everyday.
The Brief
Touch, Lebanon’s leading mobile operator, promises a new world of innovation. On a brand level, touch wanted to reinforce its leadership in the market and its promise. On a tactical level, it wanted to position itself to both touch users and the competition as the mobile operator that takes action and finds pioneering solutions. The Lebanese often need to adapt to the technologies that come from more developed countries. Be it the social media platforms they use or even in the hardware. But the problem is that these platforms are not designed for the Lebanese. Here, we’re talking about keyboards.
How the final design was conceived
leb keys is a 3rd party Latin Arabic mobile Keyboard. It was created by identifying the letters that the Lebanese don’t use and replacing them with the numbers used, in a way that the keyboard is immediately easy to use. We replaced the Q with the 3. Letters that follow the 3 are E and A. We placed the 3 and 2 at opposing thumbs. These numbers are most used. The 7 replaced the C. The 5, the least used, replaced the X. Now, It takes a Lebanese an average of 20sec to get used to the leb keys keyboard.
Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market
That’s how touch turned a complicated chat into a seamless one. Leb keys also saves the Lebanese a lot of wasted time. Millions of hours lost fetching numbers. But it also gives them a sense of up-to-date-ness. They as Lebanese, for the first time, have a keyboard they can call their own, on which they can express their every emotion and opinion in the language they like to chat in vs. adapting to others. Touch also made the keyboard available to all Lebanese, touch users or not.
Touch is the leading mobile operator in Lebanon with over 2million subscribers on a popupation of 4million. Touch promises a new world of innovation. Through the creation of leb keys, touch was able to Reinforce its leadership in the market and its promise of creating a new world of innovation. But it also subtly penetrated its competitor’s territory and its user’s mobile devices. The best part is, leb keys is here to stay, as a keyboard that each Lebanese will use, each time they want to post or text.