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By Root 2641 0

five or six, but usually ten to fifteen. Many chord keyboards allow you to type single letters or whole words with one depression of the hand on several keys. If you use all ten fingers at the same time, then there are 1,023 possible combinations. That is enough for all the letters and numbers, lower case and upper case, plus a lot of words—if only you can learn the patterns. Chord keyboards have a horrible disadvantage: they are very hard to learn and very hard to retain; all the knowledge has to be in the head. Walk up to any regular keyboard and you can use it right away. Just search for the letter you want and push the key. With a chord keyboard, you have to press several keys simultaneously. There is no way to label the keys properly and no way to know what to do just by looking. Some chord keyboards are incredibly clever and remarkably easy to learn, considering. I tried to learn one of the easier ones. Thirty minutes’ practice, and I knew the alphabet. But if I didn’t use the keyboard for a week, I forgot the chords. The gain did not seem worth the effort. What about one-handed chord keyboards? Wouldn’t it be worth a lot of time and effort to be able to type with one hand? Perhaps, if you are flying a jet aircraft with one hand and need to enter data into your computer with the other. But not for the rest of us.8

All this brings up an important lesson in design. Once a satisfactory product has been achieved, further change may be counterproductive, especially if the product is successful. You have to know when to stop.

You can observe the design iterations and experiments with the computer keyboard. The layout of the basic keyboard is now standardized through international agreement. But computer keyboards need extra keys, and these are not standardized. Some keyboards have an extra key between the shift key and the “z” key. The return key takes on different shapes and locations. The special keys of the computer keyboard—for example, control, escape, break, delete (not to be confused with backspace), and the “arrow” or cursor control keys—vary in location with the phases of the year, varying even among the products of a single manufacturer. Much confusion and strong emotions result.

Note, too, that the computer allows for flexible letter arrangements. It is a simple matter on some computers to switch the interpretation of the keys from qwerty to Dvorak: one command and the change is done. But unless the Dvorak fan also pries off and rearranges the keycaps, the Dvorak fan has to ignore the labels on the keys and rely on memory. Someday key labeling will be done by electronic displays on each key, so changing the labels will also become trivial. So computer technology may liberate users from forced standardization. Everyone could select the keyboard of personal choice.

Why Designers Go Astray

“[Frank Lloyd] Wright evidently wasn’t very sympathetic about complaints. When Herbert F. Johnson, the late president of S. C Johnson, Inc., in Racine, Wis., called Wright to say that his roof was leaking all over a dinner guest, the architect is said to have responded, ‘Tell him to move his chair.’”9

If everyday design were ruled by aesthetics, life might be more pleasing to the eye but less comfortable; if ruled by usability, it might be more comfortable but uglier. If cost or ease of manufacture dominated, products might not be attractive, functional, or durable. Clearly, each consideration has its place. Trouble occurs when one dominates all the others.

Designers go astray for several reasons. First, the reward structure of the design community tends to put aesthetics first. Design collections feature prize-winning clocks that are unreadable, alarms that cannot easily be set, can openers that mystify. Second, designers are not typical users. They become so expert in using the object they have designed that they cannot believe that anyone else might have problems; only interaction and testing with actual users throughout the design process can forestall that. Third, designers must please their clients,