QWERTY vs. Dvorak Efficiency: A Computational Approach
نویسنده
چکیده
After David’s pioneering contribution, many authors have claimed that the prevalence of the QWERTY keyboard layout is an instance of lock-in on an inferior technology, because the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is more efficient. But other authors, notably Liebowitz and Margolis, have disputed this claim. Here we proceed to examine the relative efficiency of the two layouts by computational means. The result is that Dvorak is actually more efficient than QWERTY. Our computations depend on a coefficient that measures the additional effort associated with a displacement of the hand. For intermediate values of this parameter, the gain in efficiency exceeds 10%.
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