QWERTY, DVORAK, COLEMAK, Oh My!
Bill Shander
Author of "Stakeholder Whispering: Uncover What People Need Before Doing What They Ask", keynote speaker, workshop leader, LinkedIn Learning Instructor. Information design, data storytelling & visualization, creativity.
Your keyboard probably has the highest ratios of importance to attention it receives of any device you use. By this I mean that you probably never think about it, and yet it is highly influential over everything you do on your computer.
A very long time ago, the QWERTY keyboard layout was invented. Various myths explain why the keys are organized the way they are, one of which is that it was specifically designed to slow down typists so the metal arms on keyboards in the late 19th century wouldn't smash into each other and jam the machine.
In today's era, speed is of the essence and mechanical issues are no longer issues. So...should we be considering other keyboard layouts? The short answer is "yes". The longer answer is that there are plenty of options, including two of the best-known: DVORAK and COLEMAK.
I created an interactive data story investigating (and visualizing) some of the advantages of those two layouts compared to QWERTY. I was limited in time, so didn't explore all of the nuances and angles that I could have, but it does reveal some interesting insights and you can play with the interactive feature to test different layouts with different texts.
I'd love to hear what you think about it! And if you have access to a large computer programming codebase (in a single file) that I could load as an example for comparison, I'd love it. I know that kind of content will bring very different results compared to the texts I have as examples to explore.
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