Why we should design things to be difficult to use

theguardian.com

3 pointsokhan2 comments

So his team devised a five-button keyboard where you pressed chords simultaneously to write words, delete, copy and paste. In the end, the mouse triumphed, as computer manufacturers believed that only hardcore programmers had the patience to learn the key combinations.

Several chorded keyboards came to market in the UK, receiving plenty of press (eg coverage on an influential weekly TV technology magazine program, in the days when there were only a handful of broadcast channels). They all failed dismally despite attracting a small core of devoted fans.

You can get highly customizable mice with multiple programmable buttons etc. Only gamers buy them. I do edit video and audio for work and while I like my key combos as much as the next person and sometimes set up hardware mappings on external devices for big jobs, I don't think any of them need to be universal.

The author might not have intended it but what he's describing is emacs, not chording keyboards.

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