Re: QWERTY-bashing in the copyright age

Clay Spinuzzi (spinuzzi who-is-at iastate.edu)
Sat, 26 Sep 1998 16:11:17 -0500

At 12:41 AM 9/26/98 +0100, Bruce Robinson wrote:

>It just occurs to me that for a touch-typist there is no reason why the
>QWERTY keyboard should be any more difficult than an ABCDEF keyboard. Both
>need to be internalised in such a way that the fingers match the keys. It's
>only easier for people who need to look at the keyboard. I think alternative
>keyboards are sold either on the basis that they are easier to learn
>initially or that they permit higher speeds, but not that they are somehow
>instinctive.

The QWERTY keyboard is interconnected with English orthography and human
phylogeny. The reason the QWERTY keyboard slows typists down is that
frequently used letters are assigned to the edges of the keyboard (typed by
less dominant fingers), and popular letter combinations are assigned to the
same hand (A and S) or even the same finger (E and D). So although the
arrangement isn't *instinctive*, its usability is more than simply a
training issue.

It's interesting to note that usability is distributed across various parts
of the activity system (phylogeny, orthography, the key arrangement, the
keyboard's construction). When even one part of that system changes (the
keyboard's construction), the measure of usability changes as well. Yet
unless a strong contradiction arises, cultural inertia prevents a strong
break with past artifacts. And this story is repeated, in various ways,
throughout the history of computer technology: various artifacts (the
one-button mouse, the Macintosh GUI, the 1.44MB disk) were designed with
certain constraints in mind, but persist even after those constraints are
removed.

=============
Clay Spinuzzi
spinuzzi who-is-at iastate.edu
Iowa State University
206 Ross Hall
Ames, IA 50011
(515) 294-9325