Engram redux!

[binarybottle]

After years of work, my open-access paper has just been published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction: "Optimizing comfortable keyboard layouts using human typing preferences and language-dependent n-grams: the Engram Study" (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2026.2665409) describing a new approach to optimizing keyboard layouts in different languages. Instead of assuming speed equals comfort (the paper shows speed explains only ~5.7% of preference variance, a poor proxy), I crowdsourced typing preference data from >500 people and used it to empirically derive ergonomics scoring criteria such as row separation, finger sequence, lateral stretch, and key preferences. I also validated which of Dvorak's original 1936 principles actually correlate with typing speed (spoiler: only 4 of 7 do).

These preferences drove multi-objective optimization over English and Spanish n-gram frequencies to produce new Engram-en and Engram-es layouts (https://engram-layouts.xyz/). All data, code, and layouts are fully open source. Please check out the article (and the Supplementary Material for my Engram Halloween costume!). Happy to answer questions.

Cheers,
Arno
arnoklein.info

[iandoug]

Hi Arno

Congrats :-)
Thanks for the cites :-)

Cheers, Ian

[binarybottle]

Thank you! It was a pleasure interacting with you, and thank you for your help with the Spanish corpus.