<![CDATA[In an era marked by increasing digitization and the omnipresence of smartphones, the importance of robustpassword security cannot be overstated. With the ever-growing threat of cyberattacks, there is a pressing needfor user-friendly tools that facilitate the creation of strong and unique passwords. Traditional alphanumerickeyboard layouts (physical or virtual) have remained largely unchanged for decades, relying on the sameQWERTY layout initially designed for typewriters. However, these layouts may not be optimal for generatingstrong passwords. This paper focuses on tailoring virtual keyboard layouts on smartphones specifically forstrong password creation. For this, we have performed extensive user surveys to see if the presence ofdedicated rows for digits and special characters (essential in any strong password) allows users to createstronger passwords compared to regular smartphone keyboard layout. Apart from that, we also investigatedthe optimal assignment of characters, digits, and special characters and their groupings in a single soft key.The findings from the detailed user experiment suggested optimal settings for a smartphone virtual keyboard(for Android) like- diagonal length for good typing speed (approximately between 8.38 and 9.41 cm), andkey density (0.88 to 1.21 keys/cm2) which produces the least error without sacrificing the strength ofpasswords created using those layouts. We hope the outcome of this paper will help designers to aid virtualkeyboard layouts for smartphones that can motivate and create strong passwords without sacrificing usability.]]>
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