How the Qwerty keyboard trumps its competitors—and how you can too: Case Study
What we can learn about design strategies from the widespread success of the Qwerty keyboard design.
One thing all designers are taught is that our goal as designers is to provide the most usable and appropriate solution to a problem that our users face. We tend to believe that if our proposed design solution is better than the existing solution to any problem, it will be readily accepted and widely adopted. In this article, I am going to analyse why one product has been dramatically more successful than its competitors despite being an inferior solution.
Keyboards as you know them have been around since as early as 1868. The “QWERTY” keyboard was invented for typewriters by Christopher Sholes as a replacement for existing keyboards which had letters placed in alphabetical order. These are by far the most dominant kind of keyboards. There have been attempts to redesign the typing experience, few of which I will get into in some detail.
The Qwerty — History, Shortcomings and Alternatives.
No one is entirely sure as to why the Qwerty keyboard is arranged the way it is. One of the most widely accepted theories is that the keyboard had been designed to slow down typewriters’ writing speed by spacing out the most frequently used alphabets’ keys and forcing typists to alternate their right and left hands. This was done to prevent jamming of the keyboard as a result of many keys in the same area being pressed rapidly. The keyboard format persisted even after the purpose it served was no longer relevant — i.e. on our phone screens and laptop keyboards.
The Qwerty has often been criticised for being uneconomical and unusable, and rightfully so. 10 letters can collectively spell 70% of the words in the English language — A, O, U, E, I, D, H, T, N, S. Only 4 of these letters’ keys appear in the home row (the middle row) — the most easily and naturally accessible row. The letter A falls on the home row (the only vowel to do so), but it must be struck with what is for most typists the weakest finger — the left pinky.
Another criticism of the Qwerty is that it heavily favours left-handed typists despite the fact that 70 to 95% of the world is right-handed. A total of 300 English words can be typed by the right hand alone. By contrast, 3000 English words can be typed with the left.
The Dvorak Standard Keyboard
Perhaps the most widely known rival of the Qwerty, the Dvorak Standard Keyboard was designed by professor August Dvorak in 1936. This keyboard was statistically proven to be more efficient and economical than the Qwerty keyboard. Dvorak famously said that the Qwerty was “so destructive that an improved arrangement is a modern imperative.”
The home row of this keyboard contains the 5 vowels as well as other letters that can collectively spell 70% of the words in the English language — A, O, U, E, I, D, H, T, N, S. The home row is where your fingers naturally rest on a keyboard, and is the most easily accessible row and therefore this speeded up the process of typing manifold.
People using QWERTY keyboards only make 32% of strokes on the home row. For Dvorak, that rises to 70%. The experience was designed to be more convenient, usable and easily learnable. It was definitely better than the existing design solution to typing (QWERTY).
Even so, we stuck with the Qwerty. The keyboard failed to gain mainstream attention and wasn’t adopted by any mainstream computer companies.
The Maltron
The Maltron was introduced in the 1900s as an improvisation of the Dvorak Standard Keyboard.
The Maltron letter layout is based on Extensive Frequency of Use (FOU) analysis and places the most used letters and functions where the fingers and thumbs may easily and comfortably reach them.
Maltron brings the following advantages: (source: www.maltron.com)
- Two key groups for letters with a central number group keep wrists straight and strain-free.
- Redefined thumb groups with double size key for Space, Return and Tab keys according to the layout. Central numbers suit both left & right-handed users.
- The letter keys are angled inwards to match natural finger movements and the keys for the longer fingers are recessed further to reduce finger “cramping” and provide a more relaxed hand posture.
- Large palm pads give a comfortable resting and relaxing zone for hands and arms during “thinking time”, to encourage blood flow and recovery.
They even provided an online adaptation training to quickly acquaint you with Maltron pain-free keying and provided device-specific keyboard layouts and models.
Even so, we stuck with the Qwerty.
The Colemak
Your fingers on the Qwerty move 2.2 times as much as they do on the Colemak. Further, the Qwerty has 16x more same hand row jumping than Colemak. There are 35x more words you can type using only the home row on Colemak. Most of the typing is done on the strongest fingers; the same-finger ratio is low.
It is also easy to switch to because it is free (public domain) and requires just downloading a software not switching the physical keyboard. It is easy to switch to from the Qwerty and typing classes are also available.
In some ways, the Colemak even trumps the Dvorak Standard Keyboard. The E is placed towards the right side of the home row, at a more accessible and comfortable position (for right-handed typists) than it is in the Dvorak.
Even so, we stuck with the Qwerty.
Why? Because old habits die hard.
Habit-formation as a design strategy
It is evident that the Qwerty has maintained a monopoly despite having no obvious advantages over the other keyboards except being the first.
As it seems, that is a large enough advantage. Professor John Gourdville of Harvard Business School says that your design solution shouldn’t just be better than the existing solutions, it should be at least 9 times better. Users just won’t see the benefit until the solution you provide is drastically better because they hate to learn new practices and trash all their existing knowledge and dexterity. Unfortunately for Professor Dvorak, Shai Colemak and all the other keyboard innovators, no keyboard redesign is ever going to be good enough to outdo the Qwerty 9 times over.
Existing habits trump usability. To dislodge an existing technology requires a significant change in performance, and likely an increase in functionality.
“Many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new.”
— Professor John Gourdville.
For an extensive understanding of the importance and process of designing habit-forming experiences make sure to read Hooked — How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal.
The takeaway I intend to convey here is two-fold:
Users’ Habits & Mental Models
Firstly, your target users’ existing habits are of utmost importance. Make sure that your solution is tenfold better than the existing solutions if you hope to meet widespread success, and also that your design solution doesn’t demand too much re-learning. Try working with users’ existing habits. Further, try building a product that your users can use as a habit.
It is important to recognise that all design is redesign. Users always have some existing solution to the problem your solution deals with. A great deal of emphasis should be laid on analysing your users’ existing solutions.
Users tend to have mental models that develop with interaction with the system and in the real world. Designers expect users’ models to be the same as theirs but that’s often not true. This mismatch can lead to slow performance, errors and frustration.
According to Professor Scott Klemmer of Stanford University, mental models arise from experience, metaphor and analogical reasoning. We have models and beliefs about our own behaviour, of others, of objects, even of software. Our models are often incomplete, inconsistent, unstable with time, and even rife with superstition.
Compliance with users’ mental models in your designs is a huge plus point for your product. It makes your product’s experience more intuitive and natural and enhances usability. Your users see what they expect and it responds to them the way they expect it will.
Users’ mental models is a large part of the reason why Qwerty keyboards have maintained a monopoly. Typists (all the keyboards’ users) everywhere in the world were already habituated to the Qwerty keyboard design. When the first consumer computers were introduced, designers complied with the existing users’ mental models and stuck with the Qwerty design despite there existing better and more usable keyboard layouts. When new users began using their computers, they were greeted with a familiar layout — . The same logic was applied every time a new computer or keyboard-based product was being designed, and here we are, over 150 years later, still using the Qwerty layout. Most people don’t even know that there even exists any keyboard layout except for the Qwerty.
Understanding the Nature of the Problem
Before designing a solution to a problem it is imperative to understand the nature of the problem. Some old problems don’t need a new solution. Some new solutions don’t solve the old problem.
The nature of the task here played a role in that typing is a fundamental ability for all computer users, and we don’t want to be taught how to do something this fundamental in a new way. Very few people have the time, inclination and the humility to do that. No one likes being told how to do something as basic as to type. It’s like teaching a fully functional grown-up a new way to walk that is only marginally better. No one would enjoy that.
The keyboard re-designers did not account for the nature of the task at all. They did not realise the role that human ego plays, as well as people’s lack of motivation and inclination towards relearning the way they type. Had they realised this sooner they wouldn’t have bothered trying to rebuild the experience, because sometimes some solutions are unchangeable despite being imperfect.
Most people don’t even see any problem with the Qwerty typing experience. Think about it yourself, when was the last time you found yourself complaining about the Qwerty? My guess is never. I don’t mean to imply that every problem needs to be obvious for it to be resolved— many of the largest companies solve problems that people didn’t ever notice. But if people refuse to adopt your solution even after being explicitly introduced to the problem, you should probably investigate the nature of the problem and judge if your solution is even required at all.
We can always find valuable UX design & strategy insights in day-to-day items and experiences: like we did with the Qwerty. The Qwerty keyboard has reached a stage of success that very few designs do — the stage where people don’t even notice it anymore — where people treat it less like an option and more like a fact of life. Products’ success stories tell us a lot more about their users than about the product. Reviewing the Qwerty keyboard’s success has helped us gain an improved understanding of the human psyche and users’ tendencies, which brings us back to the primary focus of all design: human beings.
