Instructable: Keyboard System

Step 2 Primary Keyboard Layout

Please take a look at this figure of a new input device for a common PC.

This is the plan view of a primary keyboard layout. Almost all of the keys required for normal English typing are present. Other characters are found on one or more alternate keyboard layouts, which are accessed by a mouse (or other input device).

You might immediately recognize that the letter keys are arranged alphabetically, and broken down into groups that each begin with a vowel. The entire alphabet is within reach of one hand.

This keyboard works in conjunction with a mouse having a middle scroll-wheel button. When the wheel button is pressed, an alternate keyboard layout is displayed on the screen, in front of all other applications. (An example of a screen layout is shown in Step 3.) When this occurs, the alternate character set shown on the screen becomes active. In essence, the wheel button acts as an additional keyboard control character.

(Hereafter, the terms character-set and layout may be used conjunctively.)

In addition to the letter keys, there are the familiar editing keys and keyboard control keys (CTRL, SHFT, ALT). These auxiliary keys are present in this primary layout, as well as all other layouts.

The wheel button is used to instruct the operating system to accept alternate layouts, while using a single keyboard. This keyboard system is designed to configure the English alphabet in an intuitive arrangement, without requiring the user to remove his or her hand from that arrangement to use the mouse (or other input device).

The primary keyboard layout is posted here for reference only. It would not be required as a screen layout.

Comments

[WurdBendur]

Putting the keys in alphabetical order is a nice idea, but it won't help much unless you're hunting and pecking. Since the layout would have to be relearned anyway, it should be designed for speed and ease of use. You might put the most common keys on the first two fingers, on along the bottom. But also keep in mind that putting all the most common keys together will cause the user strain from having to type long strings with one finger. The best layout would have the two strongest fingers alternating most of the time with other fingers coming in for less common letters. Putting all the vowels on one finger should promote this, but consonants should be distributed more. And common digraphs should be arranged on adjacent keys going left-to-right so you can easily roll your fingers over them (or maybe or top-down if the keys are low enough to slide your fingers over).

[Scrupulous]

Yes and No.

I follow your thinking on the digraphs and such. However, from a marketing standpoint, this would have to appear simple to learn, otherwise it would be a bust. (Case-in-point: Data Hands)

So, having at least the consonants arranged in alphabetical order is as good as any layout (especially if they can digraph with a row of vowels) and it will be learner-friendly.

[WurdBendur]

What if all the vowels were on the thumb so you'd tend to alternate between finger and thumb? The thumb is the strongest digit, so it should be able to handle the greater load, and the other fingers would share the consonants. As long as there aren't a lot of common sequences on one finger, it should be fine. There are exactly enough keys to fit all the consonants (including Y) on the fingers, and then the four other vowels (plus one more key) on the thumb. The escape can go there, where it isn't so easy to hit accidentally. Or the vowels (including Y) can go on the thumb, and the escape key can fit on a finger like it already is.

[Voxel]

how about the index finger has vowels, since you need those for every single word, and the index finger seems to be more nimble. also i do not like all of those smaller keys stuck on the bottom of the thumb, that part of the thumb can't possibly push those small buttons, as far as i know

[Scrupulous]

Hey, thanks for the input, Voxel. You have a good thought with the vowels. With those other keys below the thumb, they're just control keys. And, let's face it, everyone has to look down at the keyboard, and change their "home row" positioning, for most other keys except the letter and number (and ,.) keys, right?

[pyrofyr]

I guess perhaps the best thing about this keyboard would be that you would never HAVE to reposition because it would be so familiar of a stance (your actual hands layout!)

[Scrupulous]

THAT, my friend, is possibly the c-r-u-x crux of this project...

[Scrupulous]

How about the vowels on the index finger, and the rest arranged alphabetically on the remaining outer digits. That would give the alternating finger action for almost every word. I starting to shy away from the thumb being used for letters. There was some sense to that with the standard qwerty. Though, I believe the thumb is still highly under-utilized, now.

[hammer9876]

Uh, no. As touch typist, I don't have to look down to find the Insert, Home, Page Up, Delete, End, Page Down, Ctrl, Alt, and arrow keys. So no, I don't look down at the key board a lot.

[Scrupulous]

C'mon, let's be realistic, now...we all know that the average person will never hit any of those keys on a standard keyboard without looking (except maybe the CTRL). That's hundreds of millions of us.

[hammer9876]

Woo hoo! I am unique! According to Scrupulous, I am the last of a dying breed: The touch typist!

[pyrofyr]

Actually, I do the same thing. Most touch-typists can reach for ANY key on the keyboard without a problem. I personally reach for every key, without looking and relocate without looking. Perhaps from years of playing MMORPGs that frequently use these keys, but that aside, the true touch typist doesn't look at all.

[hammer9876]

OK, I admit that I sometimes (er, frequently) hit the wrong non-alpha-numeric keys, but I can hit the Backspace key easily still without looking. It is odd, though, that the lettering on my s-d-c keys are the ones wearing off, not my Backspace key. :-)

[Scrupulous]

Yaaaayyyyyyyyyyy! (I still don't know what a touch typist is...)

[hammer9876]

Wait. You are designing a new keyboard and you don't know what a touch typist is?

From http://www.sectorsoftware.demon.co.uk/typist.htm
"Unless you learn to type faster without looking at the keyboard or at you hands then you are the most inefficient part of your computer system and are wasting part of your life." (Emphasis mine.)

Have you ever had a lesson in typing? Have you ever noticed the little bumps under your index fingers when they are sitting on their home keys? Do you know what the home keys are?

If you are using a qwerty keyboard, you home keys for the left had are "A-S-D-F' and for your right hand they are "J-K-L-;". Qwerty keyboards generally have bumps on the "F" and the "J" key. They are there so that your sensitive index fingertips can find their home keys.

Take some online lessons. Improve your typing skills.

[Scrupulous]

Noticed 'em??! Heck, that's were I've been placing my PINKIES all along! Maybe that explains why I type so slowwwwww.

But, all "F'n'J"ing aside...I think the majority of us rely on those special keys, we just don't take as much pride in it. I've thought for a while, though notwithstanding pricing concerns, that every key should be "texturized" in some unique and readily identifiable way...hence, Raised Letter Keys:

P.S. have you ever noticed that "werf-jiop" would be a more ergonomically-correct home row?

[ExtremeYoshiFan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_United_States_Dvorak.svg this layout works much better, but I don't want to spend time learning it.

[pyrofyr]

That would be a great idea, but there is a problem here. Feeling requires some form of feeling, for example consider braille. Because the letter is a concept as a picture not a feel, it's completely a different thing and also requires having your mind remember it, and a letter isn't exactly the best texture, something similar to braille would be, but how many people would be using this that know braille? :P

[Voxel]

What if the plastic that housed the keyboard could have vibration sensors, so that when you wanted to space, you could kinda "hit" the whole assembly, not necessarily the keys. Spacing is so common, that it would be kinda nice if it didn't have to be delegated to the thumbs alone. Just a thought. Not exactly practical. I don't know much about the Dvorak keyboard layout, and i have never used it, but it is interesting to look at the usage of such an effective and efficient keyboard layout, and how it fell to obscurity because of the stifling monopoly of the far less efficient qwerty layout.

[pyrofyr]

I see a few problems with this. 1)People enjoy keys, it's a typical concept around forever. Now we have 'touchscreens', but even then, mechanical keys are pretty much as good as it gets ATM 2)It seems too much trouble to have this 'vibration' key, also since you can hit it anywhere, it's a bit... risky. Maybe something that you can hit in with your palm, but it seems uncomfortable. This kind of keyboard would need to go through several (as in many, many) prototypes before an RC is worked out.

[pyrofyr]

It's been a while since I've read this, but I suppose I'm still very interested in the development procedure of this, and mostly the ergonomics themselves. I agree with most here that the ergonomics definitely need to be re-thought, however I believe that they should be thought out perhaps right before a prototype is ready, as more things such as design need to be fleshed out a bit more. One thing that I can definitely suggest is two rows for every finger, and the reason I say this is because it's easier to have one finger TIP hit 4 keys that are aligned 2x2 than it is to have them aligned 4x1 vertically (or horizontally). I'll try and work out a picture of what I mean and post it later. I still love the layout, was hoping this would get done, but it seems to have been quite some time, and I don't see much advancement.

[Scrupulous]

The 2x2 arrangement is a thought. I, for one, would have to kick it around a bit...

[sweavo]

ETAION are the most frequently used letters in English. Ergonomics would dictate that the most frequently-used letters and pairs of letters should be placed most conveniently, e.g. the digraph TH is very common, and the trigraph ING. So something like Index finger: EIN Ring finger : HO Third finger: TR Little Finger: Z Q ...where the first letter is in the finger's most relaxed position, would seem to make sense. Some study would be needed on the most used characters, pairs of characters, and trigraphs in a given language (say EN-US as used on the 'net) and the key layout be generated for each locale based on that data.

[Scrupulous]

According to Guiness (circa 1992), the most words ever typed in a single minute was 216. This was done back in 1946 by some poor punt who may have not yet realized that there might be more to her own life than typing dictation at a sustained rate of almost 4 words a second. One could surmise that the value of the things one had to say (or type) would be inversely proportional to the time one spent on increasing one's typing speed, naturally. We may never need to type 216 WPM again. Why would we? What would be the true need? I don't deny that some favorable way to alternate regions for the letters that are included with common groupings would be desired. Yet, I must insist that there would be no single arrangement that would rightly satisfy everyone. The moment you complete a thorough and realistic study on the current needs for letter placement (and probably before you have time to summarize it effectively), a new set of needs arises in that language as a result of cultural changes. The reason why the QWERTY layout has been so prevalent is because it specifically does not take into account the considerations which agreeably make the most sense. It just is. We have all been forced to learn it. And, we see that our left pinky can do some amazing things. Ironically, it is the left hand that must type the three most common letters, many of the most common groupings, etc. Take the English alphabet, for instance. It is in no particular order, itself. Sure, it's alphabetized. But, what does that mean? Are all of the vowels grouped in some convenient way? Apparently not (unless I've captured it with my layout). Are they arranged in order of their frequency? Nope. They're just in alphabetical order, for what it's worth, which is constantly minced by the construction of ordinary words and the corresponding frequency of use for all the letters. In a sense, the alphabet becomes partially useless the minute we go learn some other arrangement. And, I say that fact is worth something. We've all had to learn the alphabet, too, even before we ever learned to type (in most cases). Now, count them. That's two (2) too different ways to memorize the English alphabet. Why? The answer is Why Not. But, the question is still Why. So, given that we could all conceivably do 216 amazing things, using all of our fingers, in any given minute, we might conclude that it isn't really important how the letters are arranged, as long as they are all there. Right? Now, when I suggest an arbitrarily alphabetical order on a keyboard, it sends some people into a tizzy. That's fine, and perfectly understandable. I would suggest, though, that their issue lies with the QWERTY layout, itself, not mine. And, with the unique functionality that was developed on this instructable after it was originally posted (and within the first 100 or so comments), you may find that ergonomic arrangement with respect to letter frequency has forever become even less of a legitimate consideration. I encourage anyone to discover why. I know it's a lot of reading. But trust me, it's kind of interesting. Sweavo, you are obviously smart enough to offer useful thinking on this. I'm just using your comment as a springboard for the invitation that I must present every so often to dig into this thread and see what has been developed already. And, thanks for the well-stated advice.

[A good name]

Haha, I'm only in elementary school and I once typed 144 words per minute... I can type at almost a constant of 114 with no errors... I however lose a lot to backspacing.

[sweavo]

Interesting rant :-) You're right that qwerty does not pander to the user's idea of convenience. IIRC qwerty comes from mechanical constraints in a typewriter - the letters were arranged to stop the type bars from jamming as they left or returned to the type basket. The ordering of alphabet is arbitrary, sure, but there is only one constraint on how to order an alphabet: it must be consistent. Here we have a physical input device so it seems to me clear that anything we know about the hand should be brought to bear on the problem. If I hold my hand up and wiggle my index finger 20 times, I can do it faster than I can count to 20. However, if I try to pulse the palm, as if I'm pressing with the part where the index finger joins the hand proper, then I am a lot slower, and I mess up twice before reaching 20 clean presses. I know where I'd rather have the E key :-)

[sjrSpike]

Having skipped around quite a bit, and admittedly not reading the whole bit, I apologize if I repeat anyone else's ideas: I have two suggestions about your layout: 1 -- make the 'hand' with a snap-off cover so that users can interchange the key layout themselves, whenever they need to -- this would automatically require a program that pops up an onscreen keyboard and lets the user press a key and mouse-click to the onscreen keyboard to set the 'value', but would not be any more challenging than many of the PDA character recognition programs currently in use. 2 -- Instead of a single row of buttons down each finger, put in two rows; this should give more than enough room to move all those fidly keys up off the palm/lower hand, as well as not have to extend quite so far down each finger as to induce cramping, and still be quite usable from a reach standpoint. I envision that the keys' platform could be set in such a way that the platform itself, instead of the keys, tilted each row in slightly towards the middle of the 'finger' so that the 'rearrange-it' system in #1 could still work. It would also give the opportunity to arrange keys like 't' and 'h' next to each other so that a slight rocking of the finger was enough to type both.

[Yokumguy]

I have noticed that many games on the internet use the keys WSDA instead of arrow keys. You would need to place those keys into a good spot, or you could make a gamers layout. You could even have a user settable layout so the user can choose where they go.

[CBL]

First, I want to say that I think this is a really neat idea. Kudos to its brain-parent and the brain-village raising it. This may not be the best forum for this thought, but here goes. . . . 1) The keyboard should have a place to rest the heel of the hand, unless it is absolutely necessary to use the heel for the space bar. 2) It's difficult to have vertical motion (or at least precise vertical motion) with the thumb. That's why the thumb is usually reserved for large keys on the bottom of a keyboard -- space bar, numeric 0, etc. A shift key, space bar, ctrl, and maybe a wheel, can be added to the side of a slightly thicker keyboard (like the side button on a mouse), so the thumb can be utilized more effectively. 3) I agree that alternating fingers makes for quicker typing. Rather than using an alphabetic system for ordering the layout, a frequency system (etaoinrsh -- it varies based on written, spoken, etc., but they're all pretty close) would keep certain fingers from cramping up. 4) To replace the thumb keys (left open by suggestion 2), and to shorten the height. . . . My forefinger, for example, can only reach 4 inches comfortably -- the height of my keyboard from space bar to numbers. That's 5 keys for that column. Extra columns of keys can be added for the forefinger and pinky. On the QWERTY keyboard, we typically reach with them anyway. These suggestions leave about 30 keys open for the fingers, and maybe 4 (in 2 rows of 2 along the side) or 5 plus a wheel for the thumb. Another 'reach' key (or 2?), such as parentheses, slashes, semicolon, etc. can be added to the top of each finger. That makes the 40 keys on the layout above.

[Scrupulous]

Very good.

Yeah, I'm not sold on the exact location of the space "bar" either. But, the hump in the palm area represents a support, which can be heightened as needed. I like your thought on side keys. We've agreed that the existing thumb keys can be placed in more of a horizontal line, if nothing else. Even an arc that follows the lateral path of the thumb, would provide a swath of keys on roughly the same plane as the finger keys.

Key placement has been the great debate. And, yes, ergonomics definitely come into play, so as to avoid a grossly overdeveloped left forearm. But let's face it. I think most people could stand to beef up their left arm at least a little bit. ;>)

Thanks for the feedback. You've helped me arrive at an interesting notion...

[infiniteregress]

I understand completely. You're half right about not knowing which layout is being used. It's a bit of a pain on public/shared computers, because XP is stupid, and has separate language settings for each window, so you have to change settings everytime you open a new window, else you're typing jibberish. On my own computer its ok, I've set dvorak to default. Only annoying thing is, the cut-copy-paste hotkeys have moved wildly across the keyboard, no longer are they nicely in a row close to the ctrl key. I've pretty much forsaken qwerty, but I can type both independently. So as long as the language settings are right, I'm fine.

And in light of this new development... Cool! I saw something using the same "key in-between keys" design a while back. They used it for the world's smallest keyboard, (smallest back then) I can't seem to find a link for more info cause it's probably old-school technology now. I think they based it around a touchscreen panel, with software to work out which key was pressed. Of course, button design will have to be CRITICAL for this to work.

When I first looked at your diagram, I saw six rows, and I immediately thought. Ouch. That must be a pain to type with. This is definitely better. Less movement = Less Ouch.

Though I don't believe that the alphabetic layout will be easier to learn than any other. Personally, I reckon learning to type is kind of like conditioning. In that I think "b", and my finger moves a certain direction to B, and I do this so many times that the letter becomes associated with the movement. So with practise, typing becomes nothing more than muscle memory.

Irrelevant of the layout, to become naturally familiar with the keyboard, you will have to spend time consciously thinking about key positions while typing, thus causing you to slow. I think that it's this process of actually thinking that slows you down. For about two weeks, I knew where every letter was, but sometimes I'd get a mind blank, and have to think "B? Where's B... Oh. It's here."

I simply think that to learn a new keyboard layout will be extremely painful from the words-per-minute side of things, irrespective of how intuitive it is.

Cheers.

[Scrupulous]

I'm with you on those thoughts. I also agree that the button design would be very important. It seems like the edges of adjacent keys would need to match up well with each other. The central portions of the buttons may be either lower or higher than the edges. Maybe not. Hey, let me know if you come across that reference to that "key in-between keys" design.