Thursday, October 15, 2020

Story of Keyboards and Inefficient Habit of typing with QWERTY


Habits are difficult to build and to break. This is the reason why, in todays world marketers and product managers are working to build habit forming products.

Habits which can help the users engage more often with the products leading to greater usage/purchases, greater attention (in this cluttered world) and thus making chances of larger lifecycle of the products, generating greater referrals and thus increasing the network (thus building more reasons for people to stay). Its an unending flywheel.

But is it too much to expect from a habit? No. Habits once built with much higher lifetime (continued duration of habit); can lead to such a resistance to newer ways of doing things even if rational. This is that Porter's 5 forces model's 'Barrier to entry'.

Recently came across this story around keyboards. Had heard of QWERTY keyboards that we use everywhere (touch phones, tablets, computers, typewriters) and is in vogue since 1870s when first set of typewriters were invented (currently with minimal modification). But have you heard of DVORAK keyboard? Apparently, invented in 1930s, it is ergonomically designed keeping in mind usage of letters and words in current english language. It is more efficient and comfortable if we use it today. But then why dont we use it?

Habits are difficult to break. Mankind has put in enough and more effort in adapting to QWERTY keyboard and migrating from typewriters to touch keypad. In QWERTY, the letters were ordered so that the keys which were mounted on metal arms would not jam pressed in too rapid succession (which was happening with user friendly ordering of alphabets).

Now despite knowing this fact that QWERTY keyboard is inefficient for non-typewriter era, we continue to see in new products because of this habit of current users. 

All marketers today strive to develop such good expectations or habits which work as a moat around our customers - be it a loyalty program, a UI, a colour scheme, a font, a shipping service thats super fast, an intuitive design which is easier to use and so on.

What you have built, that is building a habit?

No comments: