Keyboard

There was a period in the early 1990's when silent keyboards were in fashion. The consumer trying a keyboard in a computer shop got fascinated by the silent keyboard that reacted promptly to the light touch of a key. But the silent keyboard is not good for the experienced user. If, by accident, you press a key only halfway down then you don't know if your keystroke has been accepted or not. You have to look at the screen to check it before you press the next key. This interrupts the flow of keystrokes and distracts the brain.

A keyboard should therefore always have the 'click' feeling. This means that the mechanical force against your finger suddenly drops down when the key goes down beyond a certain threshold. This is called tactile feedback, and it makes sure that you are never in doubt whether the key has been properly pressed or not.

The size and distance between the keys should of course fit the fingers. The keys should not be too hard to press, but, more important, not too light either. It should be possible to rest the fingers on the keys without pressing them down. A typist will get strain injuries if he cannot rest his fingers on the keyboard.

The keys on a keyboard should be organized logically into functional groups. Seldom used keys may be made smaller and put away in a corner or behind a lid.

Spaces between the groups of keys make it possible to distinguish the keys by just feeling with the fingers. This is an advantage not only to blind people, but also to trained users who tend to look at the keyboard as little as possible.

The QWERTY placement of the keys on an alphabetic keyboard is not optimal but was originally designed like this for mechanical reasons. Other designs are better, but the QWERTY keyboard has become the standard. The same if true for the placement of the numeric keys on computers and pocket calculators, with 789 in the upper rows. Other devices have 123 in the upper row, as shown in the page on standardization.

This page was last modified 2008-Dec-08