Are there (or have there been) keyboard(-analgous devices) that are designed to be held with the wrists more vertical (inside of wrist facing up) - like putting both of your hands on top of something round? Say, a ball (potentially one for each hand or one two-handed one)?
The closest thing I have found relevant to this are the Maltron or Kinesis Advantage keyboards - each hand sits at (something vaguely like) the bottom of (the inside) of a sphere, though, rather than on top of something spherical. I'm pretty sure this is because it makes more keys easily reachable from the same point in space (the essence of the word "radius", no?), but I wonder if someone has hit upon a (probably slower, but) more comfortable and less-straining layout designed around the natural use/positions of the forearm, wrist, and finger arc.
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wrists and keyboard geometry
- Started by keynell
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I wonder if someone has hit upon a (probably slower, but) more comfortable and less-straining layout designed around the natural use/positions of the forearm, wrist, and finger arc.
Do you use Maltron or Kinesis Advantage keyboards? And which Layouts you are currently using and plan to switch to?
I have been doing research about keyboard layouts for the last 7 months and I almost know the effect of every key on the keyboard on the hand wrist, and because I know that people have different tastes, for example some like speed more than comfort, till now I have designed five layouts that increase in comfortability and some of them should cause almost zero wrist pain no matter how long that you have typed.All of the layouts have more alternation than dvorak and 3 of them has either same or less "same finger ration" than Colemak, so the chance to use on finger to hi two keys at the same is minimized. The layouts names are
1- Imak-speed
2- Imak-comfort-1
3- Imak-comfort-2
4- Imak-RSI-1
5- Imak-RSI-2
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Are there (or have there been) keyboard(-analgous devices) that are designed to be held with the wrists more vertical (inside of wrist facing up) - like putting both of your hands on top of something round? Say, a ball (potentially one for each hand or one two-handed one)?
Not sure what you mean by this, it seems like a contradiction. But here is a design with the inside of the wrists facing up:
http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?1700 … e-tried-it
Edit: At least facing slightly upwards. There are other vertical wrist designs, for example Kinesis Freestyle Ascent: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/images/solo … 12x390.jpg
The closest thing I have found relevant to this are the Maltron or Kinesis Advantage keyboards - each hand sits at (something vaguely like) the bottom of (the inside) of a sphere, though, rather than on top of something spherical. I'm pretty sure this is because it makes more keys easily reachable from the same point in space (the essence of the word "radius", no?), but I wonder if someone has hit upon a (probably slower, but) more comfortable and less-straining layout designed around the natural use/positions of the forearm, wrist, and finger arc.
With Maltron/Kinesis, the fingers are at the bottom of a sphere, but the hands are at the top of a big sphere. Too big, maybe -- more than 20 degrees incline would probably be better (about the Kinesis -- don't know about Maltron).
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@erw
I see how my description of wrist position is ambiguous. I meant "inside of the wrist" as in left/right inside (not as in top/bottom), i.e. when you reach for the handle of a mug to drink from it, your thumb is closer to the sky than your pinky and your palm is facing to your left or right, not the ground or the sky.
The Yogitype (moreso than the second example) is one example of something that fits my description. Not sold in the US, though, apparently.
I'm not sure what you mean by description of hand position on the Kinesis Advantage. Where do the wrists sit?
@nimbostratue
I touchtype QWERTY consistently at ~80 wpm with a fingermap most influenced by playing first-person shooters (on a macro scale - what territory each hand naturally covers / load distribution among fingers) that I started playing in middle school and distantly influenced by the traditional home-row keying technique I learned fairly well - I could average ~60-70 wpm using the traditional homerow technique taught - in my freshman year of high school. (I am in college currently.) I stopped typing homerow - although my "homebrew" typing style was affected by homerow technique - because I kept playing FPSs (sans microphone) more often than I typed papers/programmed and my speed was good enough. Traditional homerow technique influences my keying more on a micro scale - reaches/rolls. I would be happy to describe my natural finger -> key mapping (to the degree I am aware of what it is) in more detail if you are interested.
My homebrew technique is flexible. That is, there's a general finger -> keys mapping, but it has some overlaps, can adapt to typing one handed without coming to a complete crawl in wpm, and is naturally comfortable for operating programs with a good deal of keyboard shortcuts (although no, I don't use vim or emacs) without much of a transition to/from "normal" typing.
My finger -> key mapping is also comfortable for everything (my wrists in particular, but it's not like I ever "planned" it that way - this is mostly a result of a path of least resistance) except my right index finger and associated muscles.
My interest in colemak is aesthetic (I like the idea of a keymap that makes sense) and pragmatic - more than 2-3 hours of programming/typing causes my right index finger to hurt (particularly the pad and the two most distal phalanges) and I would certainly improve in speed and decrease strain if I used my other right hand fingers more. I thought I should give 10-finger homerow another try, and that with a different key layout it might stick this time.
While practicing colemak for the second or third day (albeit the first time I did anything besides use TypeFaster), I took my first serious look at the recommended fingering diagram. I use a netbook (92% size keyboard) most of the time, and the recommended finger reaches (presumably the finger uses that all the comparison statistics are based on?) impose what feels to me a terribly unnatural wrist position. (Was Colemak designed with an ergonomic keyboard hardware in mind?) I'm not saying it seems more straining than what traditional QWERTY homerow expects (nor can I deny the many other advantages of the colemak design), but I expected more from keyboard layout design processes and the statistical comparisons.
My current fix for this is modifying the QWERTY->Colemak AHK script to shift XCVB to the left one key each and swapping Z with B. (I came across this thread - https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=489).
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While practicing colemak for the second or third day (albeit the first time I did anything besides use TypeFaster), I took my first serious look at the recommended fingering diagram. I use a netbook (92% size keyboard) most of the time, and the recommended finger reaches (presumably the finger uses that all the comparison statistics are based on?) impose what feels to me a terribly unnatural wrist position. (Was Colemak designed with an ergonomic keyboard hardware in mind?) I'm not saying it seems more straining than what traditional QWERTY homerow expects (nor can I deny the many other advantages of the colemak design), but I expected more from keyboard layout design processes and the statistical comparisons.
I do agree that it is not always the most ergonomic layout that is the best for the hand. Layout design is not only about ergonomics, it should take the physiological and anatomy aspects of the hands, and that is why dvorak is exactly more comfortable than Colemak. Dvorak has minimized the access to the lower row and from my research ( referring to QWERTY) the positions keys "x" and "." can case lower writs pain if they are accessed frequently also C and , can cause lower wrist pain but to a lesser extent than x and ".". The other feature of dovrak is the that most of the common bigram are either separated by at lest one key like "ea, ou, nd" or placed on strong fingers on the home row like "th, nt". I found this to reduce tension and heat in the hand, and it seems that dvorak has studied well the hand anatomy or he got very lucky while designing the layout :), but I think the former is the correct assumption. But still dvorak is not perfect and access to the y and t positions by the index fingers should be minimized a lot to prevent upper wrist pain or at or any discomfort in the hand.
Regarding changing the position of the home row, if you are using dvorak and your mother language is English then you don not need to do any changes because x and c are replaced with q and j respectively, which are not commonly accessed. Also you can do two things which I used to do when my left hand wrist was damaged and which helped it to heal.
1- make sure you type with your left hand shoulder spread wide apart for your body. Your should open your left armpit more than the right one.
2- having done one make sure that your palm is aligned with your forearm on the keyboard as you can seen in the image below. This way you would have achieved the same effect of shifting a row and changing the layout. Now you will notice that you in this alignment your middle finger can actually hit R more easily than your index, which is true. So use an alternative touch typing technique and hit e, r and t with your middle finger, and keep the other fingers as is. At first it will be confusing but after few days you will appreciate what I am telling you by seeing the difference between your left and right hand. While your right hand will be very warm from typing, your left hand will almost feel nothing.
if you want to know more about how I do type the numbers row see here https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1153
do not forget to use my lessons to advance quickly on Colemak https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1047
and here I tell jin how to advance even more quickly with less effort. You need only to 2 to 3 hours a day and you should be able to jump to 50WPM within 10 days. I actually can now jump to this speed within a week or maybe less provided I practice only one layout https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1123
Finally use typing instructor platinum or mavis beacon 17 Delux to learning touch typing properly the programs are both excellent.
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erw said:With Maltron/Kinesis, the fingers are at the bottom of a sphere, but the hands are at the top of a big sphere. Too big, maybe -- more than 20 degrees incline would probably be better (about the Kinesis -- don't know about Maltron).
I'm not sure what you mean by description of hand position on the Kinesis Advantage. Where do the wrists sit?
Erw's description fits pretty well, you probably see what he means when you check out these pictures. Here are two of them.
Left and right hand sit in a "bowl" (inside area of a sphere) each:
The whole keyboard is like an outside segment of a sphere, so the hands/wrists are angled slightly outwards:
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This is the first time I notice that S & D keys are lower than the rest which makes sense because the index and the middle fingers are longer than the rest and they feel weird when they stay on the home key of the staggered keyboard. This keyboard deserves a buy :), though I have not done any research about available keyboards out there yet.
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