u/Cheap_Pin_7994

I'm trying to gauge people's current day takes here on whether or not most things have already been figured out in regards to not ergonomics in general, but specifically ergonomic keyboard designs especially since, in regards to the Glove80 and Svalboard at least besides opinionated differences, as far as I can tell we've had no new or especially bold ideas since then (even though it's only a matter of time potentially before someone comes up with a new input method that, while more ludicrous than the Svalboard in terms of the layout is still a "keyboard", in function more than form).

My opinion personally is that there is only so much accounting that can be done for the fingers but fundamentally, I only have a few years of being acquainted with ergonomic keyboards on the market themselves alongside the continuous builds shown here and there. That does not necessarily include the more, especially opinionated and niche sort of maker space boards that likely haven't even been mentioned on this sub due to being too far fetched perhaps, I'm sure many people have been "brewing in the lab" but in terms of expectations what I'm not sure about is whether or not the results would be ultimately arbitrary in terms of improvements.

And yes, the practical improvement of keyboards getting better after Svalboard levels is another thing entirely, for now I'm just curious as to how much experimentation, if any, we'll be seeing. Also another question as to whether or not we even can look that far into the future, I personally determined this to be worth asking still.

Yes, the question seems obvious but I'm still thinking this as someone who has otherwise previously lurked on this sub for around two years beforehand alongside also being quite familiar with places like the Alt Keyboard Layout discord, all that.

• What I can say is that it doesn't seem to be a matter of biology necessarily, and everyone does commonly recommend to not do things all in one go for the most part, instead opting for periods like 15 to 30 minutes of practice a day until an acceptable speed is otherwise reached. Still, in terms of how fast it actually takes for others to get up to par with a layout with this method in terms of for example 80 WPM, it takes some 2 weeks seemingly, others 2 months, somehow I hear even a year or so and it doesn't entirely make sense.
• This is not addressing of course in terms of practicality how common time estimates and methodology one way or another are needed in order to more precisely estimate the actual value of switching from QWERTY to any sort of keyboard layout for any one person interested, since of course we pay an opportunity cost here with the hours and that is the main price alongside losing out on the QWERTY muscle memory previously established, so the upfront cost and the debuff in exchange for a higher ceiling in terms of comfort/ease as many of you have repeated all this time. Numbers and metrics for this sort of thing can be inaccurate but I find that on average the imprecision in regards to experiences, despite being as honest as possible instead of reductive due to not relying on stats, may be too difficult to make sense of for these purposes. Once again, how do we account for the discrepancy in terms of learning speeds?
  • And yes apologies for not linking any posts here in terms of examples because it's mostly what I remember seeing instead of anything else, for this subreddit specifically I've searched up keywords such as "wpm", "how long", "learn" (yes I'm not really good at much search engine wise but that's besides the point) to estimate general public takes and opinions here, I have also taken a quick look once more at the AKL server before posting this. If anyone has any additional posts to mention that would make this one redundant or would otherwise help out information wise do link to them, I've seen quite a few that seem to avoid this sort of question which is why I ask this in the first place directly.

If anyone at all has guesses, takes or experiments for this it'd be rather helpful, also appreciated if you've read this far.