Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [55]
I’ll never forget an experience I once had at an “emerging technology” conference. A very smart programmer was excitedly demonstrating his new software, which allowed users to fly through hundreds of bitstreams—pictures, e-mails, calendars, and on and on—in the slickest way possible. Throughout the demo he stood there, this very nice and smart guy, pecking out each—letter—on—the—keyboard—with—one—single—finger. I thought to myself, this guy just spent a year of his life creating a tool that may or may not help people fly around information more quickly—and yet he could have doubled his productivity by just learning how to type. “Learn to type!” I wanted to tell him. But the law of techie conferences is to acknowledge the cool features and otherwise stay quiet, so I didn’t say anything.
This is a non-negotiable point worth restating. To become bit-literate, you must know how to touch type. So learn to type.
For advanced users: typing in dvorak
Since the keyboard is the primary input device, it makes sense that bit-literate users should learn to use it efficiently. But this can mean more than touch typing. Although it requires a sizable investment of time, the advanced bit-literate user should consider learning the best possible keyboard technology.
Years ago when I began my career as a user-experience consultant, I took stock of how I worked on the computer to make sure that I “walked the talk.” To be a legitimate user advocate, asking people and companies to change their ways, I felt that I needed to commit to using only the most efficient tools, interfaces, and methods. Almost immediately I found an embarrassingly obvious gap in my portfolio. The interface I used the most—the keyboard—was all wrong. Its arrangement of keys, or keymap, was horribly designed, even user-hostile. This was the “Qwerty” keymap, named after the letters on the top row of keys, found on keyboards and typewriters everywhere.
Qwerty was designed in the age of mechanical typewriters, when typing too quickly resulted in jamming the mechanical rods together.41 To avoid jams, Qwerty was designed with common keys and key combinations placed in hard-to-reach spots, in order to slow typists down. The Qwerty standard endured, and today hundreds of millions of people use an interface that places needless strain on their wrists and fingers. Unsurprisingly, Qwerty can cause RSI—repetitive stress injury—in users who type for long periods. RSI is a debilitating condition that can require surgery and months of recuperation, with no typing allowed, sometimes without a full recovery.
I know about Qwerty and RSI from personal experience. Early in my career, my wrists were often in pain after sustained typing. This was just after college, where I’m sure I did permanent harm to my wrists in the MIT computer labs, typing for hours at a time. As I considered the problem—and the potential hypocrisy—of working as a user advocate while using this poorly designed keymap, I found a solution that gave me healthier wrists, higher productivity, and a clear conscience.
The solution was the Dvorak keymap, an alternate arrangement of keys on the standard keyboard that makes typing easier, faster, and more accurate.42 I switched permanently to Dvorak, and after a month of practice, I was back to comfortable touch-typing. I soon surpassed my previous typing rate, which was already fast, and I’ve never had wrist trouble since.
It’s easy to switch a keyboard from Qwerty to Dvorak by enabling the right setting in the operating system. (Mac, Windows, and Linux all have this capability.) Having done so, the user can type normally on the regular keyboard, with the keys yielding different characters than they did previously. For example, in Qwerty, the letter under the right middle finger is K. In Dvorak, pressing that same key yields a T. Seeing that