Fund Arno Klein's Research on Optimized Computer Key Layouts
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My name is Arno Klein . I am a scientist who builds open-source technologies to support other researchers and to help children with mental health disorders. For my day job at the Child Mind Institute, I run a lab called the MATTER Lab, for "Mind-Assisting Technologies for Therapy, Education, and Research".
One of my personal interests is to optimize computer keyboard layouts (determining which letter is on each key) to help reduce repetitive strain injuries / musculoskeletal disorders from typing too much. You can see my most concerted effort to date on the Engram layout website (complete with open-source code and article preprint).
Engram has been featured in Dygma's "What's the best keyboard layout?" article and its accompanying YouTube video (jump to time 6:47):
Excerpts from the Dygma YouTube video:
- "Developed in 2021, Engram is a project completely created from scratch, focusing mainly on the best way to type digrams, trigrams, or... Ngrams."
- "The punctuation in the middle creates a clear gap between the hands, which makes it one of the best layouts for split columnar keyboards."
Testimonials for the Engram layout can be seen in different forums, with some of the most enthusiastic adopters in Engram's GitHub Discussions:
- "Coming to Engram, I just love the placement of punctuation in the middle of the keyboard to eliminate lateral movement of the index fingers while simultaneously providing quick access to frequently used punctuation (comma and period feel heavenly). I haven't seen any layout do this; especially spilling over the remaining letters to the right hand pinky cluster --- it's pure genius! ... I want to thank you for sharing your genius with the world. This layout is truly a masterpiece; a game changer! ...Productivity wise, I feel 50% more efficient. ...I've reached a comfortable speed of 100+ WPM with Engram 2.0 after properly configuring my programmable keyboard with custom firmware that disambiguates "home row mods" and allows me to type more naturally."
- Hi, I wanted to reach out and say thank you. I recently got into custom keyboards last year and got inspired to dive deeper down the rabbit hole and learn a new more ergonomic keyboard layout. In my search I came across your layout and it struck me how it avoids placing letters in the inner columns - unlike almost all the more popular layouts. So in departing from the dark cavern of QWERTY - I decided to flip the table and go straight for Engram. After retraining my brain and hands over the holiday break - I’ve been daily driving this layout in everything I do.
- I'm new to this universe, but that Dygma video (and article) helped me start my research focusing on Colemak VS Engram. It was not very hard to choose Engram!"
- I read the preprint paper on the development of engram and I found it very insightful and full of very logical design decisions. Personally, I like Engram the most of all the alternatives I've seen. And considering the process is replicable for any language, it seems like an awesome candidate for a spanish kb. And also, right now there is no competition ;)
Despite the attention the Engram layout has received, the ergonomics principles that underlie its design have yet to be tested in a large population as part of a scientific study. So I have set up a large-scale study to collect information from 700 people to definitively answer which key pairs are more comfortable to type. I intend to use this information to evaluate different ergonomics models of typing, and to generate optimal keyboard layouts in English and other languages.
The purpose of raising money through this GoFundMe campaign is to compensate participants through the Prolific crowdsourcing platform.
The cost to compensate 700 participants (enough to compare all letter pairs) for 30 minutes at $15/hour is $5250.
Thank you very much for your support!
Cheers,
@rno
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Arno Klein
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New York, NY