A Little Test…

I own an IBM Model M keyboard, and one of its main features (apart from the weight) is the way the keytops can be popped off and moved around. It was originally intended to let the keyboards have specific layouts for tills and specialist data-input systems.

I’ve (ab)used it for something else. I’m running a little test on a theory that we don’t really look at what’s written on our keyboards, we assume they all say “QWERTY” and rather than looking for the “Q” key, users instead look for the key at that location to avoid hitting gaps between keys.

So far, with my scrambled keyboard, I am totally unimpeded with my ability to type. I can’t touchtype, but can do a passable emulation. So long as I don’t look at the keys on my keyboard it doesn’t matter what’s written on them. Just before I begin typing I look at the keyboard - not to find the required keys, just to see where to put my hands to begin typing.

Let’s see how long it lasts before I have to revert the keyboard to normal.

Tags: Memory