Using the Dvorak Layout with a Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard

In July 1944, the U.S. Navy decided to address a problem that bedeviled them: they had a lot of lousy typists. August Dvorak, PhD, was a Commander in the Navy at that time. He had patented a simplified keyboard layout in 1932 that was designed to decrease same-hand typing, finger velocity and travel, and operator fatigue. The Navy decided to put Dr. Dvorak's theory to test. They selected fourteen lousy typists (average speed 32 words per minute) to retrain to see if they would be faster and more accurate using Dvorak's layout. It took 52 hours of retraining for the typists to regain their original speed. 31 hours later, they were typing at 56 words per minute, which was a 75 percent increase. Dr. Dvorak's theory was that a properly designed keyboard would

• Balance the load between the left and right hands
• Maximize the usage of the home row and home position
• Maximize the frequency of alternating hand responses
• Minimize the frequency of same-finger typing

In 1996, I read about the Dvorak keyboard layout and decided to try switching over. At that time, I was using an old, noisy keyboard that came with an IBM PC that I purchased in the early 90s. Figure 1 below shows what a Dvorak layout looks like on a standard keyboard.

I found a freeware typing tutor and dedicated a couple of hours per day to switching over. This was the first real effort I'd put into improving my typing speed and accuracy since high school, and it worked. At the end of the month, I was typing 85 words per minute without errors.

Typing using the Dvorak layout is like alternate strumming - sequences in English text move from hand to hand and form patterns or waves that one can feel and see.

Is it really better? Let's try an experiment. Let's look at this well-known text:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

This sentence from the United States Declaration of Independence contains 178 characters (excluding spaces) which can be typed. Let's compare using a Dvorak layout and a QWERTY layout. We'll look at frequency of handedness, frequency of row used, and which characters required a displacement of the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth fingers from the home row.

56% of all keystrokes were typed by the right hand using the Dvorak layout. 71% of the keystrokes were in the home row, 23% were in the top row, and 6% were in the bottom row. 17% of keystrokes required displacement from the home row.

Using the QWERTY layout, 38% of the characters were typed by the right hand. 32% of keystrokes were in the home row, 52% were in the top row, and 14% were in the bottom row. 27% of the characters required displacement from the home row.

In 1999, I bought a touring bicycle and rode it 5,000 miles that year. This was pretty tough on my wrists (due to my poor technique), and it became painful to use my keyboard. Seeking some relief, I looked at the Microsoft Ergonomic split keyboards.

I eventually bought a "Natural Multimedia" keyboard. It came with a CD that installed the "Intellitype" driver that allowed the PC to use the special buttons on the keyboard. This keyboard was heavy, bulky, and a joy to type on. I bought two of them. On each, the front-mounted folding legs promptly broke off. They were also very noisy.

My next keyboard was the "Natural Elite," which is still being sold as this is written. This keyboard is smaller than the Mulitimedia or its predecessor, the "Natural Pro". It's lightweight and tends to skid around if used on a very smooth surface. It also has an odd arrangement of the arrow buttons with the up and down keys bracketing the left and right keys rather than the inverted t-shape.

Next: Needless Design Changes, the Natural Ergonomic 4000 Features, and Summary