The Network Effect and the Qwerty Keyboard
You may be surprised to learn that the layout of the keyboard you have been typing on was originally conceived in the early 1880’s by E. Remington and Sons. The Qwerty keyboard was originally implemented as a de-facto standard for typewriters which were used at the time to transcribe Morse code messages. This keyboard layout was then picked up by Teletype Corporation sometime in the 1910’s who developed typewriters which were later utilized as input devices for the first mainframe computers in the 1940’s. The ubiquity of the Qwerty keyboard provides an example of a information cascade as it has been widely adopted for many years and has no strong competitors. The reason for its wide adoption has little to do with its design and more to do with the fact that typewriters had already been using them for many years. Indeed, even though the Dvorak keyboard was introduced much later in the 1930’s and was claimed to be more ergonomic than the Qwerty keyboard, it did not become an industry standard due to the information cascade effect.
Nowadays, there is simply no positive payoff for any consumer to learn an alternative keyboard layout. Computing devices such as laptops, smartphones, tablets all feature a Qwerty keyboard, whether implemented physically or via software, to allow the user to input commands and write messages. Implementing an alternative keyboard in new device may only serve to create some initial difficulty in interacting with the device which may stave off consumer interest, preventing it from gaining a sizeable market share. Despite this, others argue that for devices such as smartphones where people use their thumbs to type, another keyboard layout may be more optimal.
One such example is the Kalq keyboard designed primarily for fast text entry on smartphones as it features two sets of keys, one for each thumb. It will be interesting to see in the coming years if it does gain popularity or goes the way of the Dvorak keyboard.
Sources:
http://www.psmag.com/culture/building-a-better-smartphone-keyboard-55927/
http://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~oantti/KALQ/http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQWERTY.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10925456