I've been trying to improve my typing efficiency for a while and tried out various keyboard layouts like Dvorak, Colemak, Workman etc., but none really hit the spot.
All the existing layouts assume the home/middle row is the best/easiest to reach. But, this is not necessarily true.
The home row assumes all the fingers are of almost equal length, but thats not the case. In the standard placement above, the middle and ring fingers need to curve up more. When the palm is resting on the keyboard at an angle from the shoulder, the middle finger and ring fingers should naturally rest higher than the other fingers. This radically shifts the finger movement effort calculation. My hypothesis is that if we arrange the keys in such a way as to follow the natural length of different fingers, we can achieve a greater degree of efficiency.
This is how I came up with FITJOY.
As a programmer, I also realized that I tend to use the special characters a lot more than I use the numbers. So, the layout also changes the numbers row to print the special character (Eg. !#%^ etc.) by default, and have to press Shift to enter the number.
* Layout file : https://github.com/aj0y/fitjoy
* Related blog post: https://ajoys.medium.com/keyboard-layouts-brief-history-and-a-new-choice-8707b720d01f
