Keep your fingers off our Qwerty
New, faster alternative not necessarily better
Researchers have created a new keyboard that they claim is designed for people using two thumbs on a touchscreen device. Instead of Qwerty, they have come up with KALQ. Dr. Per Ola Kristensson says that the traditional layout has trapped users in “suboptimal text entry interfaces.”
He and his colleagues at St. Andrews University in Scotland calculate that the standard keys on a touchscreen device limit typing to about 20 words a minute.
With their funky new KALQ board, which has all the vowels on the right-hand side, users were able to get up to 37 words a minute.
This is an obvious improvement. But it is not that surprising, because Kristensson, and most difficult-to-spell pointy-headed academics, think the Qwerty keyboard is one of the least efficient pieces of gear ever invented.
The reason for Qwerty’s inefficiency is also the reason for its success.
Typewriters were invented by Christopher Sholes, a Wisconsin senator and newspaper editor. His first attempt, logically, placed all the keys in alphabetical order.
But this meant that the mechanical levers, attached to the keys, became jammed if someone typed too quickly. So, after many experiments, he moved the most commonly used keys apart. Thus the Qwerty was born. In fact, it was originally Qwe.ty — but then Remington moved the R to a more prominent position.
There is no proof that Sholes wanted to slow down typing; he just wanted to stop his machine from becoming a ball of jumbled metal. But the effect was the same — typing using a Qwerty just isn’t very quick. Also, the spacing out of common pairings of letters is responsible for millions of people developing repetitive strain injury.
There are many other machines that allow people to type more swiftly and safely, most notably the Dvorak keyboard (invented by a distant cousin of the Czech composer), developed in the 1930s. Crucially, this version allows your fingers to jump and stretch less and your left hand and right hand are used equally.
And if it’s supersonic typing you are after, you should have seen the old stenographers at work at the Old Bailey, who used strange machines that worked like pianos.
Qwerty has survived for the simple reason that it got there first and provided a machine for a world that craved standardization.
As Professor Doron Swade, a computer historian, says: “The big lesson of Qwerty was the fact that it was standard; it wasn’t the most efficient or the most ergonomically sound.”
To anyone who touch-types, using Qwerty is as automatic as handwriting.
That is why Qwerty must stay. It is hardwired into our brains; to create two separate keyboards for different devices would cause a major short circuit.