The Design of Everyday Things (48 page)

Every modern innovation, especially the ones that significantly change lives, takes multiple decades to move from concept to company success A rule of thumb is twenty years from first demonstrations in research laboratories to commercial product, and then a decade or two from first commercial release to widespread adoption. Except that actually, most innovations fail completely and never reach the public. Even ideas that are excellent and will eventually succeed frequently fail when first introduced. I've been associated with a number of products that failed upon introduction, only to be very successful later when reintroduced (by other companies), the real difference being the timing. Products that failed at first commercial introduction include the first American automobile (Duryea), the first typewriters, the first digital cameras, and the first home computers (for example, the Altair 8800 computer of 1975).

THE LONG PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE TYPEWRITER KEYBOARD

The typewriter is an ancient mechanical device, now found mostly in museums, although still in use in newly developing nations. In addition to having a fascinating history, it illustrates the difficulties of introducing new products into society, the influence of marketing upon design, and the long, difficult path leading to new product acceptance. The history affects all of us because the typewriter provided the world with the arrangement of keys on today's keyboards, despite the evidence that it is not the most efficient arrangement. Tradition and custom coupled with the large number of people already used to an existing scheme makes change difficult or even impossible. This is the legacy problem once again: the heavy momentum of legacy inhibits change.

Developing the first successful typewriter was a lot more than simply figuring out a reliable mechanism for imprinting the letters upon the paper, although that was a difficult task by itself. One question was the user interface: how should the letters be presented to the typist? In other words, the design of the keyboard.

Consider the typewriter keyboard, with its arbitrary, diagonally sloping arrangement of keys and its even more arbitrary arrangement of their letters. Christopher Latham Sholes designed the current standard keyboard in the 1870s. His typewriter design, with its weirdly organized keyboard, eventually became the Remington typewriter, the first successful typewriter: its keyboard layout was soon adopted by everyone.

The design of the keyboard has a long and peculiar history. Early typewriters experimented with a wide variety of layouts, using three basic themes. One was circular, with the letters laid out alphabetically; the operator would find the proper spot and depress a lever, lift a rod, or do whatever other mechanical operation the device required. Another popular layout was similar to a piano keyboard, with the letters laid out in a long row; some of the early keyboards, including an early version by Sholes, even had black and white keys. Both the circular layout and the piano keyboard proved awkward. In the end, the typewriter keyboards all ended up using multiple rows of keys in a rectangular configuration, with different companies using different arrangements of the letters. The levers manipulated by the keys were large and ungainly, and the size, spacing, and arrangement of the keys were dictated by these mechanical considerations, not by the characteristics of the human hand. Hence the keyboard sloped and the keys were laid out in a diagonal pattern to provide room for the mechanical linkages. Even though we no longer use mechanical linkages, the keyboard design is unchanged, even for the most modern electronic devices.

Alphabetical ordering of keys seems logical and sensible: Why did it change? The reason is rooted in the early technology of keyboards. Early typewriters had long levers attached to the keys. The levers moved individual typebars to contact the typing paper,
usually from behind (the letters being typed could not be seen from the front of the typewriter). These long type arms would often collide and lock together, requiring the typist to separate them manually. To avoid the jamming, Sholes arranged the keys and the typebars so that letters that were frequently typed in sequence did not come from adjacent typebars. After a few iterations and experiments, a standard emerged, one that today governs keyboards used throughout the world, although with regional variations. The top row of the American keyboard has the keys Q W E R T Y U I O P, which gives rise to the name of this layout:
QWERTY. The world has adopted the basic layout, although in Europe, for example, one can find QZERTY, AZERTY, and QWERTZ. Different languages use different alphabets, so obviously a number of keyboards had to move keys around to make room for additional characters.

FIGURE 7.4.
   
The 1872 Sholes Typewriter.
Remington, the manufacturer of the first successful typewriter, also made sewing machines.
Figure A
shows the influence of the sewing machine upon the design with the use of a foot pedal for what eventually became the “return” key. A heavy weight hung from the frame advanced the carriage after each letter was struck, or when the large, rectangular plate under the typist's left hand was depressed (this is the “space bar”). Pressing the foot pedal raised the weight.
Figure B
shows a blowup of the keyboard. Note that the second row shows a period (.) instead of R. From
Scientific American's
“The Type Writer” (Anonymous, 1872).

Note that popular legend has it that the keys were placed so as to slow down the typing. This is wrong: the goal was to have the mechanical typebars approach one another at large angles, thus minimizing the chance of collision. In fact, we now know that the
QWERTY arrangement guarantees a fast typing speed. By placing letters that form frequent pairs relatively far apart, typing is speeded because it tends to make letter pairs be typed with different hands.

There is an unconfirmed story that a salesperson rearranged the keyboard to make it possible to type the word
typewriter
on the second row, a change that violated the design principle of separating letters that were typed sequentially.
Figure 7.4B
shows that the early Sholes keyboard was not QWERTY: the second row of keys had a period (.) where today we have R, and the P and R keys were on the bottom row (as well as other differences). Moving the R and P from the fourth row to the second makes it possible to type the word
typewriter
using only keys on the second row.

There is no way to confirm the validity of the story. Moreover, I have only heard it describe the interchange of the period and R keys, with no discussion of the P key. For the moment, suppose the story were true: I can imagine the engineering minds being outraged. This sounds like the traditional clash between the hard-headed, logical engineers and the noncomprehending sales and marketing force. Was the salesperson wrong? (Note that today we would call this a marketing decision, but the profession of marketing didn't exist yet.) Well, before taking sides, realize that until then, every typewriter company had failed. Remington was going to come out with a typewriter with a weird arrangement of the keys. The sales staff were right to be worried. They were right to try anything that might enhance the sales efforts. And indeed, they succeeded: Remington became the leader in typewriters. Actually, its first model did not succeed. It took quite a while for the public to accept the typewriter.

Was the keyboard really changed to allow the word
typewriter
to be typed on one row? I cannot find any solid evidence. But it is clear that the positions of R and P were moved to the second row: compare
Figure 7.4B
with today's keyboard.

The keyboard was designed through an evolutionary process, but the main driving forces were mechanical and marketing. Even though jamming isn't a possibility with electronic keyboards and
computers and the style of typing has changed, we are committed to this
keyboard, stuck with it forever. But don't despair: it really is a good arrangement. One legitimate area of concern is the high incidence of a kind of injury that befalls typists: carpal tunnel syndrome. This ailment is a result of frequent and prolonged repetitive motions of the hand and wrist, so it is common among typists, musicians, and people who do a lot of handwriting, sewing, some sports, and assembly line work. Gestural keyboards, such as the one shown in
Figure 7.2D
, might reduce the incidence. The US National Institute of Health advises, “Ergonomic aids, such as split keyboards, keyboard trays, typing pads, and wrist braces, may be used to improve wrist posture during typing. Take frequent breaks when typing and always stop if there is tingling or pain.”

August
Dvorak, an educational psychologist, painstakingly developed a better keyboard in the 1930s. The Dvorak keyboard layout is indeed superior to that of QWERTY, but not to the extent claimed. Studies in my laboratory showed that the typing speed on a QWERTY was only slightly slower than on a Dvorak, not different enough to make upsetting the legacy worthwhile. Millions of people would have to learn a new style of typing. Millions of typewriters would have to be changed. Once a standard is in place, the vested interests of existing practices impede change, even where the change would be an improvement. Moreover, in the case of QWERTY versus Dvorak, the gain is simply not worth the pain. “Good enough” triumphs again.

What about keyboards in alphabetical order? Now that we no longer have mechanical constraints on keyboard ordering, wouldn't they at least be easier to learn? Nope. Because the letters have to be laid out in several rows, just knowing the alphabet isn't enough. You also have to know where the rows break, and today, every alphabetic keyboard breaks the rows at different points. One great advantage of QWERTY—that frequent letter pairs are typed with opposite hands—would no longer be true. In other words, forget it. In my studies, QWERTY and Dvorak typing speeds were considerably faster than those on alphabetic keyboards. And an
alphabetical arrangement of the keys was no faster than a random arrangement.

Could we do better if we could depress more than one finger at a time? Yes, court stenographers can out-type anyone else. They use chord keyboards, typing syllables, not individual letters, directly onto the page—each syllable represented by the simultaneous pressing of keys, each combination being called a “chord.” The most common keyboard for American law court recorders requires between two and six keys to be pressed simultaneously to code the digits, punctuation, and phonetic sounds of English.

Although chord keyboards can be very fast—more than three hundred words per minute is common—the chords are difficult to learn and 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 that 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. The casual typist is out of luck.

Two Forms of Innovation: Incremental and Radical

There are two major forms of product innovation: one follows a natural, slow evolutionary process; the other is achieved through radical new development. In general, people tend to think of innovation as being radical, major changes, whereas the most common and powerful form of it is actually small and incremental.

Although each step of incremental evolution is modest, continual slow, steady improvements can result in rather significant changes over time. Consider the automobile. Steam-driven vehicles (the first automobiles) were developed in the late 1700s. The first commercial automobile was built in 1888 by the German Karl Benz (his company, Benz & Cie, later merged with Daimler and today is known as Mercedes-Benz).

Benz's automobile was a radical innovation. And although his firm survived, most of its rivals did not. The first American automobile
company was Duryea, which only lasted a few years: being first does not guarantee success. Although the automobile itself was a radical innovation, since its introduction it has advanced through continual slow, steady improvement, year after year: over a century of incremental innovation (with a few radical changes in components). Because of the century of incremental enhancement, today's automobiles are much quieter, faster, more efficient, more comfortable, safer, and less expensive (adjusted for inflation) than those early vehicles.