1. Do not use the QWERTY-layout for the default keyboard.
Originally keyboards that came with typewriters were alphabetical. Those keyboards were mechanical devices that used a kind of small hammers (with a character on the end) to produce a character on a sheet of paper. When you typed with a certain speed, often the hammers would collide and get stuck. You had to stop then, so in the end the overall speed was not too good. 
A different layout became popular (amongst the manufacturers), especially since the inventor sold his idea (the QWERTY-layout, I believe it was to Remington). In this layout, the most used letters were assigned to the weaker (slower) fingers, thus resulting in a slower speed, but effectively in a faster speed, concerning the whole proces.Since the invention of the IBM electric ball-typewriter the need for the QWERTTY-layout has gone, but we got stuck with it, the alternative being reschooling every typist in the world.
A design that could deliver more speed than the alphabetical keyboard is the Dalton-layout.
2. Use the Alphabetical Layout as a default
Most people know the Alphabet quite well. Even experienced typists do know the alphabet better than the QWERTY-layout. They do know the QWERTY-layout, of course, but most of it is muscle-memory (That is what you use when you need money. Even if you know your code by heart, most people have to make the moves with their fingers to remember the exact code). The Alphabet was learned when you were very young, you do have a profound fuzzy knowledge of it. You know that the 'T' is near the end, while the 'F' is near the beginning, which is enough for fast 'hunt & peck'.
3. The underlying usability is more important than the keyboard-layout.
This was my main conclusion in the end. I felt I had the obligation to mention (not everybody was pleased with that, since officially it was outside the scope of my research. Well, in that case, call it a case of serendipity).
A great example of underlying usability is the search-functionality as used in OS X on Apple Computers. It is sufficient to provide the first characters and you can scroll from there.
Last but not least:
4. Let the user choose its favourite keyboard-layout
Test may show that an Alphabetical layout is faster, but that doesn't mean that it is in the perception of the user. If he/she prefers another layout (and that may very wel be because he/she perceives the QWERTY-layout to be faster), let him/her choose! It may be an emotional decision, but if it makes somebody happy, we should not prevent it.
More information
Different keyboard-layout in different languages (did you know there even is a Dutch keyboard-layout?)
4 comments:
Interesting that you're posting something about onscreen keyboards. With our multi-touch project in Sweden we are also in the progress of implementing an onscreen keyboard. At first we had the idea to only implement qwerty and dvorak (we hadn't looked into other layouts yet, which we intend to do lateron) But we most definitely will implement the ABC and the other one you mention. Furthermore we want to implement some other layouts that are common used and even give users the ability to move the letters around themselves by dragging. Even the ability to rotate the keys in case they want to create like a more natural position for the hands.
I read somewhere that the alphabetic layout isn't that good, due to the keyboard using several rows of keys.
Its easy to find the letters in the beginning of the alphabet, and the ones in the end, but in the middle things get confused because of the breaks between rows.
Hi Harry,
the soft keyboards from my research should be seen as one-touch keyboards (used initially for CD-i, later for interactive television). This means that most people use the "hunt-and-peck"-method. Although I learned to type blind (and I mostly do so at my computer), on my pda I use a little stick and prefer the alphabetical keyboard, but I would not want that with my computer.
A multi-touch screen is quite a different thing, I don't think I could type without looking, which means I would hunt & peck. So I do agree with you that an alphabetical keyboard should be the best solution. I will try to find time to write about the designs I developed for Philips (although they are patented)
Hi Peter,
it is true that most people have a fuzzy understanding about the position of a letter in the alphabet. A three-row layout is mostly preferred because most people know whether a letter is at the beginning, in the middle or more or less at the end of the alphabet. The 'breaks' in the alphabet to make a keyboard nevertheless cause the problem.
Imagine what a random layout like the QWERTY-board does!
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