Background

I got interested in (weird/uncommon) keyboard designs in 11th grade, when I saw one of my friends using his tablet with a keyboard cover and tapping the keys while the keyboard is folded back under the tablet. I thought he was actually using the keyboard, and I came up with the idea of a back-typing keyboard. I have thought about making functional back-typing keyboards and one-handed keyboards, but I never made a usable prototype. However, the idea of making uncommon keyboards have became stuck in my head.

After I got into programming, I faced 2 major problems. The first is related to symbols. The number of times I need to press keys outside of the alpha area increased tremendously, and I felt the difficulty of reaching for those keys. This comes from mainly 2 aspects. First, the standard keyboard is staggered, making it hard to predict movements for me (predicting is probably not a great word; because I don't have very good coordination, I can't remember where I need to reach, and I can only approximate the locations or calculate them before I try to reach them). Second, because most of the symbols are located on the right side of the keyboard, and that the layout of those keys are irregular, the work my right hand need to do is much greater. I developed this method where I would shift my right hand one key to the right in order to reach those keys. After that, my pinky would sit on the apostrophe, ring finger on the (semi) colon. For the other keys, I would rotate my right hand clockwise, so that my index finger can reach 9 and thus the left parenthesis, my middle finger can reach the 0 and right parenthesis, dash, and left brackets. My ring finger will then be responsible for backspace, equal sign, and right bracket. And my pinky can reach the relatively rarely used backslash. This method works "fine". I don't have any problem reaching any of the symbol, but this is nowhere ergonomic.

The other problem is related to the modifiers. Their location on the keyboard means one can only press them by using their pinkies. I have seen people pressing them using other fingers, but those are just more ways to slow you down. As I need to press a lot of modifiers as I moved to a more terminal-oriented work flow, my pinkies get tired very easily. At the same time, my thumb is rarely used other than pressing the space bar, consider the thumb's strength. This also has the problem of not being able to use your fingers to press the alphas (yes, you should press the control with the opposite hand, but the modifiers on the keyboard are not even symmetrical, which would mean another unpredictable point for me). I experimented with pressing the control, super and alt keys with my left thumb, swapping them according to the frequency I use them. This has worked for some time, relieving my pinkies work, but this is also not ideal because of the distance of those keys from the space bar.

Finally, I discovered the Mechanical Keyboards sub reddit. Although there are a lot of shiny keyboards on the site, I'm more interested in the split, ergonomic and lower profile ones. Knowing what I wanted, I quickly settled on a 5 column, 4 rows (max), and 3 thumb keys. I chose a 4 row layout at the end because I wanted to give myself more space to experiment.