Hi, 

Very long tale, so let me start with a TLDR.

TLDR: I noticed it’s hard to get my hands back quickly to typing again when taking them away from the keyboard, when using a new layout. I realized that moving the keycaps to match the layout helps a lot. I thought it could help beginners in deciding if switching keycaps around was worth it. The pictures are my solution to the lack of tactile bumps.

The long story:

I’ve never been able to touch type, even with the qwerty layout. 

A while ago, after I built a split keyboard, I thought I should try to learn, but somehow, I really don’t enjoy qwerty.

I tried a few layouts, and the one I clicked the most with was engram.

I wondered for some time if I should move the keycaps around or not, and I think I even asked around for opinions.

A common thinking, which I settled onto, was that since I’m learning to touch type, the key arrangement shouldn’t matter, and keeping qwerty could help taking the bad habit of looking.

So I kept the qwerty layout, which in a sense was convenient for SA keycaps, for example.

I moved to low profile keycaps a while ago, but I still kept qwerty.

Recently, I was reflecting on the reason why I’m still not good at it, and realized that’s because I often switch back to my regular keyboard when I slow down.

This week, I tried to force myself to keep using the keyboard with engram, even if I’m slowing down.

And I realized the reason why I often switched back to my other keyboard.

Sometimes, I would take my hands away from the keyboard, be it because I’m thinking about something to solve (and a bad habit of stroking my beard when doing so), taking notes, fidgeting with something I found on my desk, etc.

When I needed to purely type again, it was not a problem. What was a problem, though, was when I needed to do an actions that would be quick with muscle memory on a qwerty keyboard.

For example, debugging a piece of code, and if I wanted to select a few lines, copy the selection, and paste it a few lines down.

Easy to do when your hands are on the keyboard, but when they’re not, you need to get yourself back in position, and then take care of what you wanted to do.

It doesn’t take too long, but every time, you lose a few seconds, and more importantly, you break the flow, your train of thoughts.

So I decided to move the keycaps to match the engram layout, and see how it goes.

It’s a little annoying not to have the special characters perfectly represented, but at least, the letters and numbers are.

And I noticed an immediate improvement.

For the example above, I’d first select the lines with the mouse, then ctrl+c by moving my thumb to the control key while looking at the keyboard to locate the C key.

I know where it is without looking, but by looking, I skipped the phase of getting in position first, and then pressing the key.

I went for it quickly and while doing so, my hands fell in position naturally at the same time.

After doing so, I noticed I was less frustrated and didn’t feel like reaching for my other keyboard.

I’m sure that will help in building muscle memory from here.

I thought my experience could give something to consider to people who were starting learning, and wondering if switching the keycaps were worth it.

One thing that I found a little frustrating, though, was not having the tactile bump on the resting index keys, but I found a solution for that.

I checked the nail section at the 100¥ store (about $0.7), and found cheap dot nail stickers.

 I stuck them on the keys (see pictures), it works wonderfully!

Leaving qwerty behind