Author: Tuantuana

With AI empowering the car-mounted input method, what experience upgrades can car enterprise users get?

At the beginning of 2019, GeekCar’s “Intelligent Car Intelligence Bureau” officially went online, and in two years it has evaluated more than 30 car-mounted systems of intelligent cars. Watching various car manufacturers incorporate more and more life content into the car-mounted system, the car-mounted system has implemented functions such as watching videos, reading news, ordering takeaway, and scheduling movie tickets in addition to basic car control, music, and navigation functions.

At the same time, users’ frequency of using the car-mounted input method is also increasing. Compared with the strong attraction brought by the dazzling car-mounted ecosystem, the ability of the input method is easily overlooked by everyone. “Not intelligent” is often a major “gap” of the car-mounted input method. The simple, efficient, and intelligent input experience also affects users’ entire car-mounted system experience in subtle ways.

Through our car-mounted evaluation, we found that the input method of some intelligent car products on the market currently does not have intelligent shorthand input and association functions. Even when using the car-mounted input method, users must spell out all the initials and finals to find the word they want. The experience of searching for similarities in memory still appeared when I first encountered a computer more than a decade ago, which made me exclaim that a loophole had appeared in the rapid development of the Internet for twenty years.

In the car-mounted scenario, users have higher requirements for the simplicity of the input method, association ability, and interaction experience. The car-mounted input method has also received more and more attention from car manufacturers. Baidu input method targets user pain points, provides strong support for accurate input based on the knowledge map composed of billions of relationships accumulated from Baidu’s twenty years of search, and strong understanding and parsing capabilities, combined with its powerful technology in the AI field, to create a smarter and more intelligent car-mounted input method, helping B-end enterprises provide users with a better input experience.

What kind of car-mounted input method is “intelligent”?

The appearance of the thesaurus is an important sign of the input method’s transition from the 1.0 era to the 2.0 era.

In the Internet era, the input method thesaurus can already meet the needs of contextualization. The geographic thesaurus loaded in Baidu’s car-mounted input method can meet the high-frequency address input needs in the car-mounted scenario. The geographic thesaurus collects the names of many places, and can also associate through thesaurus, “guessing” the hearts of car owners more quickly and accurately, reducing input time and making it more convenient for users to use.

At the same time, Baidu’s car-mounted input method also supports association with the national administrative division thesaurus. By inputting the vocabulary of the administrative division, the next-level administrative division vocabulary can be associated. For example, by inputting “Shanghai”, the input method will automatically associate with “Pudong New Area,” “Huangpu District,” “Xuhui District,” and so on, allowing car owners to exclaim the “cleverness” of the input method in seconds.

The introduction of AI makes the input method step from the 2.0 era into the 3.0 era, and shorthand input and contextualized word generation are also essential on intelligent car-mounted systems.The abbreviation input refers to the automatic recognition of initials or the first letters of initials by only inputting them, such as “hcz” will show “火车站”. Baidu Input Method’s in-car input method can currently support multiple simplified abbreviation input schemes. It not only displays locations directly according to initials, but also supports mixed Chinese, English, and numerical input, greatly reducing the number of keystrokes for drivers and passengers, and better meeting their long address input needs.

At the same time, the abbreviation input has also been optimized for different scenarios, adjusting the candidate word sorting based on the APP scene currently being used by the user. For example, when using a map APP, entering “qlz” will prioritize displaying “七里庄”, while in video and other applications, it will first show “七龙珠”. Even if two applications are running on a car screen at the same time, the car input method can realize the input effect of main screen navigation and sub-screen entertainment. As users use it more, it will prioritize the input words that are more relevant to the scene, helping users find the corresponding information as quickly as possible in the corresponding scenario.

Perhaps you are a professional writer who can “argue with the masses” with just one keyboard, but in the car, you can only use one finger to get the information you want. In this special input requirement, geographic thesaurus and abbreviation input have become a major advantage of Baidu Input Method in the field of in-car input.

How to Match Landscape, Portrait, and Large-screen Keyboards with Car Screens?

The screen is the core interactive medium in the intelligent cockpit. Different car manufacturers’ intelligent cockpit solutions, their preferred interaction methods, and vehicle positioning will all affect the shape, size, and number of screens in the car.

Given that personal input habits are different, the handwriting input function has also been ported to today’s intelligent cars. However, for the car use scenario, the user experience of most in-car input methods still needs to be further optimized. Many users’ handwritten texts cannot be accurately recognized after writing. In response to this demand, Baidu Input Method’s car input method has customized and optimized the handwriting input function for the car use scenario.

Even tilted writing can be recognized.Usually, the main screen of a car’s infotainment system is positioned in the center of the vehicle, creating an angle between the screen and the driver and front passenger. As a result, any text displayed on screen will appear tilted. Regular input methods often struggle to recognize cursive or slanted handwriting, which is inefficient compared to typing on a keyboard. Low recognition rates can add significant frustration for users in such environments, causing a major pain point for car infotainment systems. The slanted handwriting feature addresses this issue, allowing the input method to accurately interpret even slanted handwriting, resulting in a more convenient and enjoyable user experience.

Freehand Writing Mode

Although we usually only input short text strings into car infotainment systems, such as the name of a place or song, if the input method only supports recognizing one word at a time, this will significantly increase the user’s time cost. Baidu’s vehicle input method supports a freehand writing mode that fully utilizes the large screen space. Users can write multiple characters continuously, and the input method can accurately recognize them, providing users with convenient and efficient input experience.

Following established protocols is the user experience of early-generation intelligent terminal devices. However, the newest operating systems such as Apple’s and Huawei’s HarmonyOS have shown a trend toward flexible and customizable layouts to better serve individual user needs. On various screen forms, the layout of the car input method’s keyboard should be different. To address this issue, Baidu’s vehicle input method has created a floating keyboard. Users can freely move the keyboard to any location they wish, satisfying their preferences and habits. This not only facilitates drivers but also allows front passenger users to find what is the most comfortable “posture” for them with the floating keyboard.

It is worth noting that Baidu’s input method also provides a “sliding input mode,” where users simply slide their fingers quickly over the keys without lifting them off the screen to complete their input, significantly improving the ease-of-use through the application of advanced technology.

These functions require advanced AI algorithms on the part of the input method. In a market where hardware differentiation is significant, the customized Baidu vehicle input method has stronger and smarter software abilities, helping car companies provide users with better experiences. Currently, Baidu’s vehicle input method has cooperated with automakers such as Geely and BYD to advance their vehicle input method business.

What does Smart Input Change?

For most people, input method is just a tool for communication. However, by analyzing the case of Baidu input method customizing car input method, we can learn that it is quietly optimizing our experience on intelligent terminal products. In addition to empowering terminals, there is also Baidu input method in the field of intelligent office and intelligent marketing.

With industry-specific dictionaries and industry-specific voice input, and combining with Baidu’s core AI technologies such as knowledge graph and NLP, as well as the advantages of its search services, Baidu input method provides customers with input solutions for office scenarios. Baidu’s smart input customers can improve employee productivity to a greater extent, allowing employees to quickly retrieve relevant internal data, literature, read foreign languages without obstacles, and improve meeting communication efficiency, etc.

Baidu input method’s smart input solution can also extend marketing through scenario functions, helping enterprises create accurate operation channels. By creating exclusive brand skins for enterprises, deepening enterprise impressions in users’ minds, embedding enterprise marketing modules in input methods, and accurately displaying enterprise services and marketing activities to target audiences, Baidu input method fully taps the value of private domain traffic.

Not long ago, Baidu input method created the “Minsheng Keyboard Bank” for Minsheng Bank, which is a successful case of smart marketing applied in the financial industry. Through the launch of exclusive brand skins, Minsheng reached its customers deeply and innovatively developed Minsheng Bank’s services and marketing modules, helping the bank quickly identify private domain traffic and provide users with one-stop convenient services.

AI is the keyword of Internet 4.0 era, and car input method is only a microcosm of Baidu input method’s AI capabilities. While continuously improving the user experience of the C-end, Baidu input method constantly delves into the B-end, focuses on various scenarios and enterprise pain points, and launches a series of smart input solutions to help B-end customers improve their product experience, and further enhance their brand value.If you want to know more about Baidu Input Method’s intelligent input solution or seek cooperation, you can click on the original article to read more and fill in the information, or send an email directly to input-business@baidu.com. Our staff will contact you later.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.