Custom keyboards? They’re totally great. And we can keep telling you this, but you really won’t feel it until you try a few and find one or two that are right for you. If you’re already on board, we wonder: is there any limit to what custom keyboards can provide in terms of a good, comfortable time for your fingers, wrists, arms, shoulders, and neck? We think not, and as time goes on, there is more and more evidence to support this.
Take [vpzed]’s Toast keyboard for example. The beauty of customization is that as with any other human input problem, you’ll discover many more people who share your misery once you present a solution. In this case, it is the portion of the population whose index fingers are shorter than their ring fingers (which is evidently men in general). This is known as the 2D:4D ratio and is decided during gestation. At first, the phenomenon was thought to be due to high testosterone exposure in the womb, but subsequent studies have debunked this belief.
Toast aims to sate the need for a keyboard layout that accounts for a significantly shorter 2D than 4D by way of aggressively staggering the index finger’s key positions and staggering the columns overall. As you might imagine, there are no inner keys for length-challenged index fingers to grasp at — that would just be cruel. But there is another pinky column on each hand, which bring the key total to 34. We like the square boards, and frankly wish they were bread-shaped.
Not enough keys for you? Take a look at this many-keyed monoblock split with a numpad in the middle.
via KBD
I hadn’t noticed before that my Index finger is shorter (by a little bit) than my Ring finger!
But I do have trouble accurately hitting the “6” key on keyboards.
Never caused me any issue, and mine are a fair bit shorter, but then my hands are on the whole quite giant…
Really does make you ponder the more folks make their ideal ergonomic keyboard/mouse/whatever how long until a big brand with lots of manufacturing clout just makes a drag and drop style self assembly style custom models – maybe even scan your hands for that optimal spacing (not that I’d be all that interested in such a service myself – choosing for and making yourself is something special to us here, just not something everyone can or will go for).
I’d be astonished if there wasn’t lots of money in real high quality ergo stuff, and while hands have so much variation between individuals if you are making for so many people you will get huge numbers wanting the same parts…
I have one hand one way, and one hand the other.
Same, my left pointer falls shorter than the ring, wheres it’s the opposite on my right. I can force my fingers to shift to reverse the relationships, but that’s how they naturally fall. I find it likely from long adaptation to an instrument.