The Human-Machine interface: The Keyboard and Mouse

A major factor in designing a website is the user interface; the user needs to be able to tell what they need to do to get to what they are loking for. Whether this is done by giving written instructions, graphic icons or established convention (such as underlined, blue text representing a link), the goal is to make it as intuitive as possible.

Before looking at what considerations need to be made in web design user interfaces, I want to take a step back and look at the broader picture; what we're dealing with before we even get to the website- the keyboard and the mouse, and where the vision of todays computers has come from.

The invention of the typewriter was a solution to a problem; contrary to what you might assume, the problem was that it was very difficult for blind people to write, so the first typewriter (as we know it) was patented in 1868 to give them a way to put words to paper.

22 years later in 1895, the design was revised, so that the paper was the other way up in the machine, with the printed text facing the typist- before then, the keys would strike behind the paper (like in the postcard illustration here), so it was impossible for the user to actually see what they were writing (which wasn't an issue, because the original intended users were blind.) This was a solution to a new problem- the sighted couldn't use a typewriter as well as the blind.

The QWERTY layout of the keys on a typewriter keyboard (named after the first five letters on the first row) was also a solution to a problem. It was thought to be designed to keep commonly used letters away from one another, so that when the keys of a typewriter moved to strike the page, they wouldn't stick together if they were hit simultaneously. (It is also thought that it was

Mechanical typewriters were later superseded by electrical typewriters, which replaced the array of keys with a typeball which moved across the page (rather than the page moving in front of the keys), meaning key jams were no longer an issue. Electric typewriters were then superseded by electronic typewriters and word processors, eliminating the keyboard mechanics altogether. The problem that the QWERTY keyboard layout was created to solve has long been eliminated.

The point is that when a solution to a problem is designed which works well, it doesn't necessarily go away when the problem goes away. Sometimes you can be left over with a new problem- how to move on from the old solution. Which means that the solution that works the best isn't necessarily going to be the one that is used the most- or at all. In the early 1960s, Douglas Engelbart found that with just a few hours training, trained typists could type faster using a one handed "chorded keyboard" than on a QWERTY keyboard- leaving the other hand free to operate the mouse. However, existing familiarity with QWERTY keyboards appears to be a large factor in their acceptance as part of the standard idea of a desktop computer. We're now seeing a generation which has probably never seen a mechanical typewriter, but can type on a QWERTY keyboard as easily as write with a pen.

If you have used a German (QWERTZ), French (AZERTY)or Italian (QZERTY) keyboard layout when you are used to an American or English one, you will no doubt have found yourself making mistakes because of the different position of the Z key (and others.) If you use an American keyboard, you will probably find yourself getting occasionally frustrated by the different positioning of the speech marks, and the @ and £ symbols. Alternative keyboard layouts have been developed, and have been shown to be more efficient to use (most notably the Dvorak layout), but the QWERTY layout remains a standard. It works, people know it and are familiar with it, so there's no drive to change it to something different. Although there are better alternatives available, it appears that it's simply not thought to be worth the effort to switch across.



On the other hand (literally, as it was originally intended) is the computer mouse. Patented in 1963 by Douglas Engelbart, the first ever mouse was a wooden device, with 2 wheels on the bottom to track horizontal and vertical movement.

The thinking behind the original mouse (patented as the "X-Y Position Indicator For A Display System", but referred to as "the Bug") was that the user would continuously hold the mouse in one hand, using the other to type on a 5-key chord keyset with the other (where different combinations of keys represented different characters or words.) Although the original design had a single button, Englebart's philosophy on buttons was "as many as possible"- his three button prototype was only limited to three because he "couldn't find anywhere to fit any more switches."

The idea of the mouse was further developed at Xerox' PARC, where it became a part of the first ever graphical user interface. The wheels were replaced by a ball, with internal wheels which translated it's movement, and the three buttons became a standard. The PARC group also settled on the idea of grabbing the mouse when needed, and using a full QWERTY keyboard alongside it. However, it wasn't until Apple released the Macintosh computer in 1984 (reverting to the single button design) that the mouse made it's way to mainstream usage.

Although now optical beams and lasers are usually used instead of wheels or balls, the boxy wooden case has been replaced by ergonomic plastic shells and wireless communication can replace the wire "tail" (would a mouse without a tail would better be called a hamster?), the basic principle of the design hasn't changed since PARC's developments. Even though todays first person shooter games like Doom and Half Life 2 were beyond the wildest dreams of Douglas Engelbart, his device is still by far the favoured controller for gamers because of the combination of accuracy and range of movement, despite the developments of many different types of joysticks, trackballs, lightguns, graphic tablets and even motion-capture devices.

So on one hand, our main interface with computers was designed over a hundred years ago, so that blind people wouldn't get the now non-existent mechanical keys stuck together, which has had improvements designed which have failed to catch on. On the other hand is a device that is being used for precision tasks way beyond what a computer was originally imagined to be capable of, but which has yet to be improved upon.