

The single biggest usability quagmire in computing - techdog
http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/09/single-biggest-usability-quagmire-in.html

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clawrencewenham
This article is perpetuating a myth: that the Sholes keyboard was designed to
slow-down typists. It wasn't, it was designed to make keystrokes come from
alternating sides of the keyboard. THAT was what prevented the hammers from
sticking, not the reduction of typing speed.

In fact, the QWERTY keyboard accidentally _increased_ typing speed, because as
one hand was hitting a key, the other hand was targeting the next letter. This
alternating hand movement was the greatest factor in increasing typing speed,
and Dvorak's tweaks to the layout produces benefits too marginal to measure.

When people switched to Dvorak and found they typed better it was because
they'd paid more attention to their typing for a while, not because the new
layout was superior.

