The FITJOY Keyboard Layout— An efficient typing strategy
A New Approach to an Efficient Keyboard Layout
This article presents a brief history of the keyboard layout, starting with QWERTY, an alternative (DVORAK) and my new approach that lead to a different layout (FITJOY).
First, some history.
In the beginning, there was QWERTY
When typewriters were invented back in 1874, the layout of the keys was a system known as ‘QWERTY’, (name is derived from the first 5 alphabets of the top row of your keyboard). It was established in 1874. Why this layout? Several reasons abound. From Wikipedia:
One popular but unverified explanation for the QWERTY arrangement is that it was designed to reduce the likelihood of internal clashing of typebars by placing commonly used combinations of letters farther from each other inside the machine.
Another story is that the QWERTY layout allowed early typewriter salesmen to impress their customers by being able to easily type out the example word “typewriter” without having learned the full keyboard layout, because “typewriter” can be spelled purely on the top row of the keyboard. However, there is no evidence to support these claims.
This system continues to be the default on most keyboards nowadays.
Rise of DVORAK
Since QWERTY was build without regard to typing efficiency, some folks started looking for alternatives. The most common alternative mentioned being DVORAK, which was derived in 1936 (much before computers were invented). His philosophy and research were eye-opening during those times.
The DVORAK layout became popular enough that operating systems started embedding the layout as an option to switch to. There are studies available that show no apparent advantage to using DVORAK and those that favor it. But last research done in 2013 shows that there is an advantage to a different layout:
The results, which depend on a coefficient that measures the extra effort of hand displacement, favor unambiguously the Dvorak layout. For intermediate values of the coefficient, Dvorak is approximately 10% more efficient than QWERTY.
But switching the layout to a totally different key structure required re-learning all the mind-finger mapping that was acquired by using QWERTY. This was difficult for a lot of people, obviously. Especially programmers found the layout of the C & V keys in particular (used for Copy & Paste in almost all operating systems) to be inconvenient. Thus began my search for an alternate to the alternate.
Other Alternatives
Some of the prominent alternatives are Colemak, Workman etc. People came up with a wide range of layouts and it was hard to compare. A system was devised to measure the relative efficiencies of different layout using finger movement as the fundamental unit, giving rise to Carpalx. Carpalx introduced a parametric model of typing effort. Now layout debates were quickly won by pointing to the effort scores.
Still, there are interpretations that give room for arguments. The pinky finger is harder to use than other fingers, so the distance it travels needs to be given more weight. Position of C & V are critical for programmers, so anybody that moves them around is less preferred. Also, the least number of keys that are moved around, the less inertia is there to learn. These additional factors further complicate the logic that is carpalx.
All the existing layouts assume the home/middle row is the best/easiest to reach. But… this is not necessarily true.
The home row assumes all the fingers are of almost equal length, but we all know thats not the case. In the standard placement above, the middle and ring fingers need to curve up more. When the palm is resting on the keyboard at an angle from the shoulder, the middle finger and ring fingers should naturally rest higher than the other fingers. This radically shifts the finger movement effort calculation. My hypothesis is that if we arrange the keys in such a way as to follow the natural length of different fingers, we can achieve a greater degree of efficiency.
A New Layout : FITJOY
I propose the FITJOY keyboard layout (because its a joy to use ;) )
The heat-map shows the keys that are used the most for a classical english text. I don’t have to tell you which fingers lie where. It should be intuitive. This layout also maintains the ‘C’ and ‘V’ keys, since they are used a lot with other modifier keys.
I used an online tool available here : http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main to generate the heat-map of the usage of the keys for the text in ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
It does not score high for the most efficient layout, since the finger distance moved is high, but this is because the layout is optimized for some of the fingers being on the top row. The key advantage is that only 12 keys are switched around. This is very important. This makes the layout more likely to be used.
I generated the layout file using a tool called Ukelele. You can use it to try out different layouts for yourself. Here is the FITJOY layout file (XML) if you want.
Let me know what you think.
