futurejournalismproject:

Would you Abandon the QWERTY Keyboard?

And Australian entrepreneur has spent 25 years trying to get an alternative to the QWERTY keyboard into the market. With the rise of smartphone touch screens, he thinks he might have a chance.

Via Stuff:

[John] Lambie is in the United States shopping around his keyboard, which has been designed for optimum use with just one finger or to split itself in two to make typing easier with two thumbs.

The Dextr keyboard is in alphabetical order with the letters split over five rows instead of three and it is able to be flipped for easier use by left handed people.

“I’ve been playing with ideas, doodling things in the margin as it were for over 25 years,” Mr Lambie said.

“I was inspired by a lecturer at university who had severe cerebral palsy and therefore very limited use of his hands and fingers and he would always, in every single lecture, find some way to say some derogatory remark about QWERTY.

“He said it really is the worst piece of usability design ever.

“It’s become so entrenched unfortunately that the human race is almost stuck with it.”

Mr Lambie pointed out the QWERTY keyboard was originally designed to slow people down and space the most used letters far apart so typewriter arms would not stick together.

Lambie’s target audience is in the developing world where people have not grown up with — or accustomed to — the QWERTY keyboard but are now buying low-cost smart and feature phones.

AHEM. Let’s just take a ‘did I just hear someone throw out some random “fact” about the “developing world?”’ time-out. Do you know where mobile penetration is among the highest in the world? It’s not the USA. It’s countries in the UAE and the Caribbean - you know, the so-called ‘developing world’. Did you know that South Africa has a mobile penetration rate of about 95%? And do you know which countries have populations that skew young? Also the ‘developing world’.

Update: According to the original article, ‘Mr Lambie is targeting developing countries, such as India and the Philippines, where people have not grown up with QWERTY keyboards in their homes, but are buying up smartphones that have been made in countries such as China on the cheap.’ Ok, some things: Five years ago the Philippines already had more than 40% mobile penetration; it’s now >100%. India has more than 900m mobile subscribers and penetration >70%. Now lets talk about keyboards, and the need for localizations…