Adopting the AZERTY layout for French
The QWERTY keyboard is the most well-known and widely used format of keyboard layout not only in English, but other languages with similar alphabet systems such as German and Spanish. While being the most used keyboard layout, there have been several doubts as to whether the QWERTY keyboard was the most efficient one as it was originally built for typewriters in order to stop jamming the keys together. However, regardless of its efficiency, due to the richer-get-richer dynamics along with the fact that it is tied to the manufacturing of laptops and computer devices that is inherent to keyboards, QWERTY still remains to be the most popular keyboard layout until today. This article provides insight into how France, despite having similar alphabetic systems to English and despite using QWERTY keyboards mainly in the past, has been moving onto the AZERTY keyboard due to several other beneficial factors of changing the system.
We learned that in order to break the cluster of people using one technology and convince them to use the other, the fraction of the neighbors using the technology has to be at least b/(a+b) with a being the attractiveness of technology A and b being the attractiveness of technology B. This shows that increasing the attractiveness of technology A will increase the denominator of the least fraction of neighbors needed to choose A. With a smaller threshold, it is easier to break into the cluster of technology B, which in this case is the QWERTY keyboard. Markets in English-speaking countries have not been able to break this threshold of using QWERTY despite the better efficiency of other keyboard formats because of its popularity. The attractiveness of other keyboard layouts is simply not sufficient to outweigh the current popularity of QWERTY. Keyboards in French, however, have already adopted the AZERTY keyboard due to its benefits and are considering taking a new keyboard layout that is the developed form of the AZERTY keyboard which has beneficial factors other than the efficiency of typing. France was able to adopt the AZERTY keyboard because of its early adaptation, however, this keyboard layout still needs development. Typing in French properly requires being able to type accents on certain letters and the current keyboard system lacks intuitiveness. There has been a problem with the younger generation ignoring the accents because it is hard to type and the French government has addressed this issue and supported making French easier to type with an adjusted keyboard layout. The new layout maintains some elements from the past AZERTY keyboard in order to make the transition to the new layout easier while being more efficient at the same time. We learned that increasing diffusion is mainly a marketing problem that helps persuade users to adopt the new technology. With the French government supporting the project of the modified AZERTY keyboard layout, there will be incentives to the initial users, helping break into the cluster of the current keyboard layout. Much like the French keyboards, I think the efficiency of typing English will be more acknowledged over time and provided with appropriate incentives to early adopters, will become developed over time making typing, coding, and any other typing activity more efficient to users.