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Lenovo put nearly a year of research into design changes that debuted on an updated ThinkPad laptop – the extra-large “Delete” and “Escape” keys.
It may seem like a small change, but David Hill, vice president of corporate identity and design at Lenovo, points out, “Any time you start messing around with the keyboard, people get nervous.”
Computers get smaller and faster every year, but keyboard design remains largely stuck in the 19th century. Back then, fast typing would jam typewriters, so a keyboard layout that slowed down flying fingers was devised. The commonly used A key, for example, was banished to the spot under the relatively uncoordinated left pinky.
Typewriter technology evolved. Mainframe computing led to function keys and others of uncertain use today. The PC era dawned. Yet many laws of keyboard layout remain sacred, like the 19-millimeter distance between the centers of the letter keys.
PC makers were reminded not to mess with keyboards in the past year, as netbooks – tiny, cheap laptops – have become popular with budget-conscious consumers. Early models boasted screens measuring as little as 7 inches on the diagonal, requiring shrunken keyboards that many people found to be too small.
The computer makers have largely shifted focus to 10-inch or larger netbooks, so there’d be room for near-standard keyboards.
In designing the new ThinkPad that debuted in late June, Lenovo installed keystroke-tracking software on about 30 employees’ computers (They volunteered). On average, they used the “Escape” and “Delete” keys 700 times per week, yet those were the only “outboard” keys, or non-letter keys, that hadn’t been enlarged.
Lenovo made those two keys about twice as long in the vertical direction to fit the way people reach up, rather than to the side, and then deliberately whack those keys, said Hill. The new design cuts down on accidental taps of the “End” and “Insert” keys, too.
The new keyboard isn’t perfect. Hill called “Caps Lock” a frustrating hangover from typewriter days, a key that can introduce garble, emulate shouting or foil password entries without the user’s noticing.
“I think maybe sometime in the future, we should maybe entertain removing it,” he said. “It’s one of those things you kind of have to approach with caution.”
