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Comment by jonathankoren | Hacker News Reader

I’m pretty sure you regularly use a piece of plastic with 104 near identical buttons without looking at any of them.

Not identical: they typically have raised markers on two of the home row keys precisely to help with orientation. And, well, your hands are already positioned over them much of the time, so relative identification is much easier. Not so with these buttons.

I am 37 and have felt for these raised markers precisely zero times.

I’m 33 and was the mostly the same until I switched from QWERTY to Colemak. Now my index fingers practically live on the f and j keys.

Have you ever tried typing on a keyboard without them? They're one of those things that you don't notice consciously but is actually really important.

Not sure I'm using them even unconsciously. Because every time (admittedly not often) that I get a new keyboard I type shifted (as in djogyrd instead of shifted) for a while.

If i'd be using those raised markers I wouldn't take so much time to adapt I think?

These are in 4 different blocks with only 4 each, I don't think this is terribly hard without looking. And it's not like these are functions like windshield wipers that would typically go somewhere else. Looks more or less like typical buttons to me.

The bottom two blocks are fine, I agree, because they're laid out in two dimensional so if you feel around for the corners and identify the buttons that way.

The top set of buttons arranged in a line are much worse. They're two sets of 4 in a sense, but they're nearly undifferentiated from the hazard lights button, so in reality it's one long strip. I strongly suspect that people will take their eyes off the road to look at those buttons more often than not.

(Yes they're media controls, but let's be honest: people will use them to skip tracks while driving.)

Car buttons often have markers as well.

That’s not analogous. Proper use, or accustomed use, of a keyboard places the hands in the correct position by default. Our hands don’t remember the _absolute_ position of those buttons, only their position _relative_ to other buttons.

Buttons in car control panels require users to leave the default position of hands-on-wheel and acquire the new button. That’s an expensive operation, and it’s well-studied — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

Also, keyboard layouts are static — learn QWERTY once, use it forever. Car control panels are usually different between cars, so learnability is harder. Many people regularly drive multiple cars, increasing difficulty again.

Okay then. How many times do you you stare at the controls on the television remote every time you turn it on or off?

This is over blown. You only have to learn your car's radio once per car.

>Also, keyboard layouts are static — learn QWERTY once, use it forever.

Or you could learn Dvorak and switch between the two.

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