An alternative Chinese keyboard layout design for single-digit typists

This study designed an alternative Chinese keyboard layout for single-digit typists and evaluated the efficacy of this innovative layout design. The new eight row by five column keyboard layout was designed based on the principles of alternative keyboard design. Eight college students with proficient keyboarding were involved in this study. The repeated measurement experimental design was used to compare the speed and accuracy of keystroke among the four different keyboard patterns: QWERTY, Alternative, RevisedQWERTY, and Random-Alternative. The experimental results indicated that the subjects' typing speed is fastest when utilizing the QWERTY layout (63.86 symbols/minute), followed by the Alternative (56.02 symbols/minute), Revised QWERTY (53.39 symbols/minute) and the Random-Alternative keyboard (49.94 symbols/minute). There is no significant difference among QWERTY, Alternative, Revised-QWERTY, and Random-Alternative layouts on the subjects' typing accuracy. The possible causes of the unpredicted results and suggestions for further studies were discussed.