* Richard Brauer <rbrauer_at_mindspring.com> [021023 16:34]:
> Can someone explain to me why all these PDA companies are including
> keyboards and then using the QWERTY design? It seems essentially
> impossible to use touch-typing, particularly given that they're
> designed for the thumb, so why are they using a design originally
> intended to slow the user down and lives on solely for touch typists?
Regardless of whether one is a touch typist or not, one is likely to be
very familiar with the layout of the Qwerty keyboard. This makes it
easier to locate the keys even on a tiny thumb keyboard. This is
especially true for novice users who might not yet be familiar with a
particular custom key layout. Even if a different layout might result
in faster typing in the long run, having a layout that people are
already familiar with may result in more sales, since people who pick it
up in the store will have more success with the familiar layout than an
unfamiliar one.
Most of the characteristics of the Qwerty layout which may have been
designed to slow down touch typists on manual typewriters are not very
relevant to thumb keyboards, since you are only using one or two fingers
anyway. A more relevant model for evaluating the effectiveness of the
Qwerty layout for thumb keyboards might be to use Fitt's law and the
Hick-Hyman law and an appropriate linguistic model to predict data entry
performance. For a very good survey of data entry methods for handheld
devices, see <http://yorku.ca/mack/hci3.html>.
Qwerty lives on not solely for touch typists, but because of network
effects. There is a massive investment in Qwerty, and the amount of
benefit to be gained by switching to another layout is small enough that
it doesn't offset the cost of replacing keyboards, retraining touch typists,
and the loss of productivity as non-touch typists become familiar with a
new layout. Since nearly all keyboards these days are attached to
computers, it is trivial for you to switch keyboard layouts, but if you
ever need to go to another computer, or if someone else needs to use
your computer, or if you need to look down at the keyboard, which will
still display Qwerty, you will run into some of these switching costs.
-Scott
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