An analysis of the standard English keyboard
Yuzuru Hiraga, Yoshihiko Ono, Yamada-Hisao · 1980
A study of the nature of hand and finger motions in typing process was made, based on the data on time intervals between key strokes.Many of the results obtained confirm those formerly obtained by Dvorak and other researchers.In addition, it was [bund that each key sequence is affected by its context, thus proving that the mental aspects of typing directly affects its productivity, and that the performance analysis on a particular keyboard arrangement is not sufficient to predict the performance on other arrangements.Based on these results, the current English keyboard is judged to be a less than ideal tool for typing.However, when carefully examined, even a rudimentary measurement of certain factors of typing behavior would lead to a good understanding of some pertinent aspects of the typing process.We faced the problem of keyboard optimization in the process of developing a Japanese-input keyboard.Our approach here is based on the measurement of the time interval of key strokes, obtained from the typing performance of English text by a proficient typist, In this paper, we first present the findings based on these data, discuss an important human factors problem involved in them, then attempt to present an evaluation of the QWERTY keyboard in this perspective.