5 ms·

I worked a lot in human-computer-interaction a couple of decades ago, and people always try to make a better keyboard, and outside of niche uses, they have fail

I worked a lot in human-computer-interaction a couple of decades ago, and people always try to make a better keyboard, and outside of niche uses, they have failed, except for small, incremental tweaks. In fact, it is an example I often use of how, most often, when people try to reinvent something, they instead end up learning why the existing thing is so great. I know I've done it multiple times with various technologies. It's a great learning experience, but my money is betting on the keyboard staying the keyboard :)

salamandersauce 5y ago
I think there is already better keyboard designs but it's hard to compete with the one that everybody is already familiar with, fits easily on laptops and costs dirt cheap to buy and make because the volume is huge. Most people aren't going to spend $300+ on a keyboard that they have to learn how to use and businesses aren't going to want to spend the money and time training employees how to use it. The inertia of the standard keyboard is far too high.
- melling 5y ago
  I suppose if one has the issues mentioned in the article, a few hundred dollars isn’t much
galcerte 5y ago
Aren't keyboards with control, shift, escape, etc... where the thumbs should be objectively better in terms of ergonomics, though? At least if you're hitting those keys all the time, since the thumb's the strongest finger. I'm seriously considering getting a split keyboard after realising just how much I'm going to type in the following years and how much Emacs and/or Vim I'm using. Something something Emacs pinky.
- seanw444 5y ago
  Spacemacs leader key setup is very nice (I'm sure you could achieve it without needing Spacemacs) as nearly every command you do begins from the spacebar, and thus your thumb. Haven't gotten a sore pinky since. Well, actually, I never used the normal Emacs keybindings. I learned my Emacs knowledge starting with Spacemacs, but I never cared to learn the default bindings anyways.
- throwanem 5y ago
  Binding Caps Lock to Control helps with that. It's still far from ideal, but it is at least no longer actively terrible.
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    That's what I do. It definitely helps. Heavy vi(m) users tend to map it to Escape, but I find that: - I use Control a lot more than Escape (especially in the shell, where I spend a lot of time); and - Escape is already not in a horrible position, and it's not a modifier key so I don't need to twist and curl my wrist and fingers in order to type a combination of keys.
    - urxvtcd 5y ago
      I have capslock configured to act as control when held down, and as escape when tapped. Best thing since sliced bread.
    - malnourish 5y ago
      I don't understand why one would set Caps Lock to Escape. As a vim user, I set it ton Control. Control+[ is effective for my Escape needs.
  - jschulenklopper 5y ago
    s/Control/Escape perhaps?
cableshaft 5y ago
> when people try to reinvent something, they instead end up learning why the existing thing is so great As someone who has actively tried to switch to Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts and failed, I'd argue it's less because that Qwerty is so "great" and more that it's just so entrenched everywhere, that unlearning it for keeps is difficult. Like I'd have to set up Colemak everywhere I go, if I sat at someone else's computer or a public computer it would be back to Qwerty, if you ever look down at your keys for reference (something you want to do a lot when you're learning a new layout) they're telling you Qwerty, etc. Also the unlearning process can be slower than I'd like, and my typing speed plummets while I'm learning these things, so I'm less useful at work or school or working on personal projects. I've been using Qwerty for over 20 years at this point, whereas my Colemak experiment was only a few months. It did seem like I was straining my fingers less when I was using Colemak, though, and could potentially type faster eventually if I could ever fully commit to it.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  > Like I'd have to set up Colemak everywhere I go, if I sat at someone else's computer or a public computer it would be back to Qwerty When I switched to Colemak (in Grad School) I bought a cheap laptop so I could make a clean break and never need to use a "public" computer again. (That was just before my first iPhone, and I actually imagine that should be even easier now that so much of what the need for borrowing "public" computers as a student in those days has moved to our phones. The rest was already mostly replaced at that point with tools like SSH and RDP remoting. One useful discovery at the time was that if I was RDPing into my desktop machine back in my dorm on a "public" computer in a school lab, I'd need to hunt and peck my address and password in in Qwerty, but as soon as I connected to my own machine, I could touch type in Colemak because it was my machine and set to use Colemak as default.) I also made peace with looking like a slow idiot and hunting and pecking out QWERTY when trying to help someone on someone else's computer. When I need typing speed I use a computer I control. I learned to stop worrying about my typing speed on other people's computers. > if you ever look down at your keys for reference (something you want to do a lot when you're learning a new layout) This was a feature for me rather than a bug. Proper touch typing is "never glance at the keyboard" (and I was taught that over and over from childhood with Qwerty lessons, though I was bad at it with Qwerty; including teachers that insisted lessons needed to be done with a cover over your hands and the keyboard so that you couldn't look) and if you can't trust the key caps you have more reason to never look. > Also the unlearning process can be slower than I'd like, and my typing speed plummets while I'm learning these things, so I'm less useful at work or school or working on personal projects. For what it is worth, what worked well for me was taking a long holiday weekend where I didn't have work or school or personal project deadlines to do just about nothing but Colemak typing lessons. Going entirely cold turkey on not using anything but Colemak when touch typing from that point onward. (I also make a distinction between touch typing and "swipe typing" as entirely separate skills despite both involving "a keyboard" and don't have a problem touch typing in Colemak and swipe typing in Qwerty.) That long holiday weekend was enough that I felt comfortably fast with Colemak for work/school/personal projects as I started to get back into them that I never felt like falling back on my old bad Qwerty habits, even if it was still maybe a small bit slower than where I had felt like I'd been before the switch, and as with anything once committed to it and using it every day speed only improved from there until I didn't feel any speed difference at all (and presumably am faster than I ever was with Qwerty though I never trusted speed metrics enough to say for sure). I was highly motivated though to unlearn Qwerty, so obviously your mileage will vary. My Qwerty touch typing form was wrong from years of self-taught programming (my left hand was shifted off the home row left by a key to spend more time on the accelerator keys and my right hand had to move a lot more to compensate). Late in grad school with a mountain of assignments both school and otherwise I was dealing with an immense amount of hand pain that I was sure likely meant I was deep into the early stages of carpal tunnel and buying a cheap laptop and switching to Colemak seemed like a great cost savings over surgery. More than a decade later, almost closer to a decade and a half now, it still seems like a great deal and I'm very glad that I did it.
diegocg 5y ago
The only thing that prevents some ergonomic keyboards from becoming mainstream is the price. Low price is the only great thing about standard keyboards.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  Very skeptical of this take. If it were the case you would expect most or all rich people to be using ergonomic keyboards, since even an expensive keyboard would easily be affordable to them. Yet when I look at the folks who work at my office (none of whom make less than $200k/y), fewer than 15% have non-standard keyboards. I think the real issue is that for most people, ergonomic keyboards do not offer a real benefit.
  - diegocg 5y ago
    They will as soon as they get RSI. This is the other side of the problem, people is reactive, not preventive, towards RSI problems. IT needs to get the into the mindset that not using an ergonomic keyboard is a problem.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      For the fraction of people who end up developing RSI, and for whom the RSI is treatable or preventable merely by switching to an ergo keyboard, it's great. However, - not all RSI is treatable by using an ergonomic keyboard, and - many people do not develop RSI no matter what keyboard they use. It's not clear to me the exact fraction of people who end up developing RSI and what fraction of those cases would be prevented by ergonomic keyboards. However, I can say that most people I work with are not newbs. It seems likely that if they were ever going to get RSI, at least some of them would have done already.
  - zokier 5y ago
    > I think the real issue is that for most people, ergonomic keyboards do not offer a real benefit. Or they are not aware of the benefit until RSI strikes, which is arguably too late.

salamandersauce 5y ago

I think there is already better keyboard designs but it's hard to compete with the one that everybody is already familiar with, fits easily on laptops and costs dirt cheap to buy and make because the volume is huge. Most people aren't going to spend $300+ on a keyboard that they have to learn how to use and businesses aren't going to want to spend the money and time training employees how to use it. The inertia of the standard keyboard is far too high.

melling 5y ago
I suppose if one has the issues mentioned in the article, a few hundred dollars isn’t much

galcerte 5y ago

Aren't keyboards with control, shift, escape, etc... where the thumbs should be objectively better in terms of ergonomics, though? At least if you're hitting those keys all the time, since the thumb's the strongest finger. I'm seriously considering getting a split keyboard after realising just how much I'm going to type in the following years and how much Emacs and/or Vim I'm using. Something something Emacs pinky.

seanw444 5y ago
Spacemacs leader key setup is very nice (I'm sure you could achieve it without needing Spacemacs) as nearly every command you do begins from the spacebar, and thus your thumb. Haven't gotten a sore pinky since. Well, actually, I never used the normal Emacs keybindings. I learned my Emacs knowledge starting with Spacemacs, but I never cared to learn the default bindings anyways.
throwanem 5y ago
Binding Caps Lock to Control helps with that. It's still far from ideal, but it is at least no longer actively terrible.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  That's what I do. It definitely helps. Heavy vi(m) users tend to map it to Escape, but I find that: - I use Control a lot more than Escape (especially in the shell, where I spend a lot of time); and - Escape is already not in a horrible position, and it's not a modifier key so I don't need to twist and curl my wrist and fingers in order to type a combination of keys.
  - urxvtcd 5y ago
    I have capslock configured to act as control when held down, and as escape when tapped. Best thing since sliced bread.
  - malnourish 5y ago
    I don't understand why one would set Caps Lock to Escape. As a vim user, I set it ton Control. Control+[ is effective for my Escape needs.
- jschulenklopper 5y ago
  s/Control/Escape perhaps?

cableshaft 5y ago

> when people try to reinvent something, they instead end up learning why the existing thing is so great As someone who has actively tried to switch to Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts and failed, I'd argue it's less because that Qwerty is so "great" and more that it's just so entrenched everywhere, that unlearning it for keeps is difficult. Like I'd have to set up Colemak everywhere I go, if I sat at someone else's computer or a public computer it would be back to Qwerty, if you ever look down at your keys for reference (something you want to do a lot when you're learning a new layout) they're telling you Qwerty, etc. Also the unlearning process can be slower than I'd like, and my typing speed plummets while I'm learning these things, so I'm less useful at work or school or working on personal projects. I've been using Qwerty for over 20 years at this point, whereas my Colemak experiment was only a few months. It did seem like I was straining my fingers less when I was using Colemak, though, and could potentially type faster eventually if I could ever fully commit to it.

WorldMaker 5y ago
> Like I'd have to set up Colemak everywhere I go, if I sat at someone else's computer or a public computer it would be back to Qwerty When I switched to Colemak (in Grad School) I bought a cheap laptop so I could make a clean break and never need to use a "public" computer again. (That was just before my first iPhone, and I actually imagine that should be even easier now that so much of what the need for borrowing "public" computers as a student in those days has moved to our phones. The rest was already mostly replaced at that point with tools like SSH and RDP remoting. One useful discovery at the time was that if I was RDPing into my desktop machine back in my dorm on a "public" computer in a school lab, I'd need to hunt and peck my address and password in in Qwerty, but as soon as I connected to my own machine, I could touch type in Colemak because it was my machine and set to use Colemak as default.) I also made peace with looking like a slow idiot and hunting and pecking out QWERTY when trying to help someone on someone else's computer. When I need typing speed I use a computer I control. I learned to stop worrying about my typing speed on other people's computers. > if you ever look down at your keys for reference (something you want to do a lot when you're learning a new layout) This was a feature for me rather than a bug. Proper touch typing is "never glance at the keyboard" (and I was taught that over and over from childhood with Qwerty lessons, though I was bad at it with Qwerty; including teachers that insisted lessons needed to be done with a cover over your hands and the keyboard so that you couldn't look) and if you can't trust the key caps you have more reason to never look. > Also the unlearning process can be slower than I'd like, and my typing speed plummets while I'm learning these things, so I'm less useful at work or school or working on personal projects. For what it is worth, what worked well for me was taking a long holiday weekend where I didn't have work or school or personal project deadlines to do just about nothing but Colemak typing lessons. Going entirely cold turkey on not using anything but Colemak when touch typing from that point onward. (I also make a distinction between touch typing and "swipe typing" as entirely separate skills despite both involving "a keyboard" and don't have a problem touch typing in Colemak and swipe typing in Qwerty.) That long holiday weekend was enough that I felt comfortably fast with Colemak for work/school/personal projects as I started to get back into them that I never felt like falling back on my old bad Qwerty habits, even if it was still maybe a small bit slower than where I had felt like I'd been before the switch, and as with anything once committed to it and using it every day speed only improved from there until I didn't feel any speed difference at all (and presumably am faster than I ever was with Qwerty though I never trusted speed metrics enough to say for sure). I was highly motivated though to unlearn Qwerty, so obviously your mileage will vary. My Qwerty touch typing form was wrong from years of self-taught programming (my left hand was shifted off the home row left by a key to spend more time on the accelerator keys and my right hand had to move a lot more to compensate). Late in grad school with a mountain of assignments both school and otherwise I was dealing with an immense amount of hand pain that I was sure likely meant I was deep into the early stages of carpal tunnel and buying a cheap laptop and switching to Colemak seemed like a great cost savings over surgery. More than a decade later, almost closer to a decade and a half now, it still seems like a great deal and I'm very glad that I did it.

diegocg 5y ago

The only thing that prevents some ergonomic keyboards from becoming mainstream is the price. Low price is the only great thing about standard keyboards.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
Very skeptical of this take. If it were the case you would expect most or all rich people to be using ergonomic keyboards, since even an expensive keyboard would easily be affordable to them. Yet when I look at the folks who work at my office (none of whom make less than $200k/y), fewer than 15% have non-standard keyboards. I think the real issue is that for most people, ergonomic keyboards do not offer a real benefit.
- diegocg 5y ago
  They will as soon as they get RSI. This is the other side of the problem, people is reactive, not preventive, towards RSI problems. IT needs to get the into the mindset that not using an ergonomic keyboard is a problem.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    For the fraction of people who end up developing RSI, and for whom the RSI is treatable or preventable merely by switching to an ergo keyboard, it's great. However, - not all RSI is treatable by using an ergonomic keyboard, and - many people do not develop RSI no matter what keyboard they use. It's not clear to me the exact fraction of people who end up developing RSI and what fraction of those cases would be prevented by ergonomic keyboards. However, I can say that most people I work with are not newbs. It seems likely that if they were ever going to get RSI, at least some of them would have done already.
- zokier 5y ago
  > I think the real issue is that for most people, ergonomic keyboards do not offer a real benefit. Or they are not aware of the benefit until RSI strikes, which is arguably too late.