Why don't big producers of keyboards offer truly ergonomic keyboards?

[Piotr Dobrogost]

By truly ergonomic I mean at least left and right sides are symmetrical and there are keys under thumbs. By big producer I mean company like Logitech or Microsoft. I know market for truly ergonomic keyboards is tiny in comparison to the whole keyboard market but I guess there are still hundreds of thousands people who would buy truly ergonomic keyboard. 

[xmagusx]

Two main problems:

First, there is nothing to define "truly ergonomic". There is no standard, nor is ergonomics a field prone to developing a cookie cutter to stamp out standard anythings. As such, when there is no standard, there are far fewer opportunities for economies of scale, which prevents the lion's share of profit margins for major producers.

Second, it would take a lot of research to develop a keyboard which was enough of an improvement for a significant enough user base to justify even a small production run, and those keyboards would then not only have to show profit on their production costs, but also the cost of that research. All at the same time the company would be taking on the risk that they'd created The Homer in keyboard form and have to take a loss on the entire line. There's just no need to take on that risk when you have a successful product line.

Ergonomics are simply a niche market when it comes to human-machine interface devices, and most manufacturers are quite content with the devil they know. The prevalence of QWERTY is strong evidence of that mentality throughout the marketplace.

[Danule]

i dont see the point, i find standard layout to be the most ergonomic.

[xmagusx]

i dont see the point, i find standard layout to be the most ergonomic.

Case in point for the difficulty of having a "standard" ergonomic keyboard.

[Findecanor]

I think more people would still like Microsoft's fixed-split fixed-tent keyboards than they would like the Kinesis or the Maltron, had they known about them.
Logitech and many others have made clones of Microsoft's keyboards, and they are not that uncommon in thrift stores and at flea market, so that tells me that they did sell.

No that MS is well known for its ergo keyboards, I think that they have a great window of opportunity to innovate and add more ergonomic features (such as thumb keys) in coming models. The latest ones had a split Space Bar (Alternate Erase key), which is nice, but I would like to see more.

[Puddsy]

Because designingh a good one is A) hard B) expensive

That and the market is pretty small. It's a niche within a niche.

[Piotr Dobrogost]

Because designingh a good one is A) hard B) expensive

Make it symmetrical and with thumb keys and it's much better than all the rest. I think it's neither hard nor expensive. 

[Piotr Dobrogost]

i dont see the point, i find standard layout to be the most ergonomic.

What is this based on? Have you tried other layouts? How many and for how long if I might ask?

[xmagusx]

Make it symmetrical and with thumb keys and it's much better than all the rest. I think it's neither hard nor expensive.

In a company the size of Microsoft or Logitech, any change is hard and expensive -- even the shade of grey that the wrist rest is -- because of the sheer number of people who will put their hands on it between the idea "let's change ______" and "the new _______, now available in charcoal grey." And what you're describing are drastic and largely untested (at least at scale) changes.

There really isn't a way to "just do" anything in a company that size.

[davkol]

The reason is the same as the reason why the majority is still stuck with QWERTY. Plenty of papers have been written about this, many of them by economists or sociologists—not engineers or experts in human physiology/ergonomics.

tl;dr version: people, and companies even more so, are lazy ****s

However, there's still some hope left. Imagine if Kinesis sponsors successful progamers...

[Niomosy]

Hell, I would be ecstatic with an Ergo 4000 type keyboard with MX reds.  Every other ergonomic keyboard I've seen puts important-to-me keys in harder-to-reach places than good old qwerty (\|, the brackets, `~, and occasionally /? as well as '" keys).

[tp4tissue]

It comes down to averages

Consider the fact that many people have bad posture, and are not seated properly at the desk.

"given" improper technique and desk heights, the standard flat qwerty is a one size fits all compromise.



That doesn't make standard at all good,   it's just convenient, and most novices don't know any better.