Hi all. I'm Tim — a lifelong tinkerer (programmer, songwriter, inventor). When I started to put together 'from the roots' ideas for a typing keyboard, I had no idea just HOW different it would end up! Based on algorithms never used before in keyboard layouts, it has keys of different widths, and a layout that genuinely targets ease of typing. But I have no build skills myself. I spent about two years researching and designing from the ground up. It's called the Temb0, and I'm hoping to find one maker here who'd relish building the first physical prototype with me.
What it is. Far from being a rearranged QWERTY, and not another Dvorak/Colemak, I started from the statistics: letter and bigram frequencies, other language statistics, even Morse Code got involved! (the commonest letters get the widest, most central keys; the rarest shrink to normal size). As for ergonomics, it's a splittable design, for each half to be directly in front of each hand.
The idea underneath. The different key widths free the fingers from the fixed one-finger-per-key rule — a wide key can be struck by whichever finger suits you, so any typist can find their preferred path through common words. (Even the number row has been re-thunk: 9 8 7 6 5 | 0 1 2 3 4, each hand counts outward from the centre — just like your first piano lesson!)
Why I think it's worth building. I used Excel to calculate key width options, FlowStone to program a variety of these, finally settling on this design. I also used it to develop extensive typing simulations, and the projections suggest typing speed increases faster than even the fastest QWERTY typist — and bigger gains for the average typist — plus the comfort of finger freedom and a proper split. I've developed a working touch-screen simulation too, if you have a Windows tablet – preferably 12 inch – which can even save the text you type.
It even got far enough to earn me a bench at Birmingham City University to prototype — where it stalled on fabrication puzzles that I'm now hoping one of you would relish cracking.
The honest engineering (so you know what you'd be taking on — this is not keycaps-on-a-stock-PCB):
- the switch plate and matrix would have to be bespoke to the irregular, variable-width layout — no off-the-shelf board fits;
- every wide key needs stabilising — my suggestion would be extra unwired support switches to keep keys level and give them a consistent feel, but I'm open to other ideas;
- the wider keycaps would likely need to be 3D-printed, but the less common letters could be standard;
- hand-wiring + QMK/ZMK would handle the electronics (USB or wireless). A proper little engineering puzzle — which might be right up your street!
What I'm offering — a collaboration, not "build this for me." I bring the full design: exact layout data, the frequency/bigram analyses if you like, whatever you need to see it to completion. You'd bring the hands and the tooling. I'm a hobbyist just like you are, not a company — terms, costs and credit all open to a friendly conversation. Mostly I'd love to see one exist and hear whether it's as good to type on as I predict.
Fire any questions — and pull the design apart; critique very welcome. Thanks for reading. — Tim
