I voted other. As someone with a hardware design background … I usually just observe. But in this case, you’re making a huge mistake that I can’t stay quiet about. I’ve spent years working around hardware peripheral design, about three of them dedicated to tactile input devices [keyboards obviously being among them].
This… this is awful. I think that this approach is not what you should be striving for.
Have you looked at use cases or case studies on how people use the delete, backspace, and navigation [Home,End,PgUp,PgDn] keys?
Very few people use a delete and backspace key without moving their hands from the home row. Unless they’re looking at the keyboard (which a veteran user does not want to do), they identify both of those keys by gliding their hands to the top right corner of the keyboard and knowing that the top-right most key is delete, and the larger one placed below is backspace. Having another set of keys that manipulate the view is just poor design.
Don’t build a key layout based on what a full-sized keyboard ‘would’ have placed things, simply because the use case is very different. Instead, you should be looking at how other laptop keyboards have placed their keys and which keys are rarely, if ever, used. (In a use case scenario with Dell, for example, they found that less than 0.01% of their users even used the scroll lock key more than once a month, which is why they omitted it from designs over seven years ago. The Pause key left not long after due to similar reasons - about 1 in 700 users vs 1000. Insert is still used by about 5-10% of users, depending on field.)
Please don’t try to redesign what already works in this situation - or if you do, do NOT base it off popular voted opinions. In these scenarios, we don’t know what we want until we try it. And by then, it’s too late. Trust me. I’ve been on projects where millions were wasted due to community/user opinion without actively testing it in the field.
I know that if it was before I did the work I did, I’d have voted for the Natural or Popular options. After having experience in the field and being able to test out hardware using goofy layouts, I understand why newer laptops have the layouts they do - rigorous use-case tests and active feedback from viewing errors and concerns from input failures.
I highly suggest you look into research on keyboards involving this. Logitech, Dell (Alienware), Lenovo, and Steel Series have all done extensive research on key placement efficacy and usability. Don’t make the mistakes they made years ago with an error-prone keyboard. [Look up G keys on Logitech - special macro keys that were placed on the right-hand side of many of their first gaming keyboard iterations. They got great reviews initially due to first visual impressions, but after going out to consumers, failed miserably. Eventually, they were placed on the left-hand side of the keyboard to avoid the amount of mis-inputs that were occurring.
Steel Series has evolved from desktop to portability as well, even obtaining exclusive contracts to build certain brand laptop keyboards. A number of their recent keyboards and their layouts on laptops have been critically acclaimed, and the designers behind them have spoken at a number of panels discussing the millions of man hours going into researching optimal design flow - especially once you start looking at localization (They’re a Danish company who manufactures keyboards in all existing locales, and they adapt their design philosophy to be user friendly and also viable from a manufacturing standpoint.).
And of all the companies I mentioned above, I think Lenovo is the best scenario. When they first launched their ThinkPad series, they were going for a enterprise desktop replacement in all aspects - keyboard included. The first laptops set a precedent on what was or wasn’t expected, but they started to find that a majority of their users had problems inputting certain commands. Later, they discovered that cramming a full-sized keyboard onto a smaller frame (15.7 or smaller) wasn’t a good idea. New competitors who released ‘slimmer’ iterations of the keyboard were seeing more positive feedback. Now, their latest designers have said that looking at Mac’s design philosophy significantly changed how they approached future projects - active testing with a wide variety of users to narrow down what works best for the scenario at hand. As a result, they now use one of three different keyboard layouts, based on the targeted demographic for their hardware.
And while doing something ‘new’ is always nice, having a layout that forces a user to ‘relearn’ how to navigate on a keyboard when swapping from one piece of hardware to another is just a bad experience. A big no-no in this industry.
Please reconsider. Look at the Microsoft Surface keyboard layouts [any of the last generation work, but the Pro and Book series is closest to the ‘optimal layout’ on a non-full sized keyboard, minus the detach key on Book] for something that is most ideal for users across the board.
[Especially since your layout is uniquely flawed in that it’s very similar to a project I’m under NDA to not discuss in detail. But without getting too into it, your delete key, while being on the far right corner, is not actually placed above the backspace key. This will cause a stupid amount of problems, especially when the Insert key is pressed by accident, which will cause further input errors. Please add a Function key to shift/toggle Del and Ins - this is the most optimal experience on literally everything portable now and used in nearly every locale.]
Edit: I need to reiterate how misleading your posted poll is. People are used to seeing Del in the top right, so it makes sense to vote for that key layout. That said, it’s NOT parallel with the Backspace key. This alone is enough reason to not approve it. In live tests, you’re going to see a lot of entry errors for people not hunting and pecking at the board. I guarantee it. This is especially the case if you don’t have a 8mm+ key travel distance allocated, and even then I wouldn’t like it.
[I work as MD @ my company now, so I’m okay with that, lol.]
