Bad User Experience (UX) design of Keyboards


What is Bad in the User experience of Keyboards?
The Location of the Keys - Q W E R T Y U I O P - Totally Non-intuitive.


How did we arrive at this design?
Modern keyboards have evolved from Typewriters of  the 19th century:


This keyboard style was first adopted in 1873. The reason the letters were placed as they were (rather than in alphabetical order like the early typewriters) was to solve a problem that existed at that time. Some people wound up typing so fast that the mechanical rods attached to the keys would stick to each other. To resolve this, the QWERTY keyboard was developed. It placed keys in such a manner that the most used letters were spaced out so that the rods were less likely to clash into each other when typing. This keyboard layout became standard with the popularity of the Remington typewriter which was the first to use it, and all other manufacturers fell in line. So, we are still using a keyboard layout designed to fix a problem that no longer exists.

What's the Solution?
Over the decades, many people have tried to introduce keyboards that make more sense.
Example 1 - Dvorak Simplified Keyboard which is designed to increase typing speed:


Example 2 - Alphabetical ABCDEF layout Keyboards

But, why do we still see all the QWERTY layout keyboards around?
Because everyone has somehow learned to use it and most of us have become so good at it that we type without even having to look at where individual keys are any more. To get used to a different layout would almost be like learning a different language.

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