A Split Keyboard Designed for Human Hands

A surprising number of things we use in everyday life retain most of their design cues from their 19th century ancestors. The bicycle retains the same basic design as it …. A Split Keyboard Designed for Human Hands.

The bicycle retains the same basic design as it had in 1890, as does the sewing machine, the toilet, the car, and of course, the keyboard and the QWERTY layout from old typewriters. But we aren’t doomed to have our technology perpetually living in the past. [Paul] wanted a keyboard designed around human hands, rather than being designed around a machine, so he built this unique split keyboard.

The design of this specific keyboard went through around 50 iterations before he was comfortable with it. Other design goals here were for it to be portable, and the split nature of this certainly makes it more compact as does the use of low-profile switches. Each finger’s column is angled and spaced based on the needs of that finger, with the ring finger keys sitting higher and the index finger columns angled inward.

Each thumb has access to three keys, one of which is the spacebar and the other two layer keys, which is what enables this design to get down to only 36 total keys.