Keyboard Layouts and Cognitive Overhead
Published: 2022-11-22 22:18:09

Before I start talking about my experience with mechanical keyboards and what it has to do with Cognitive Overhead, it's important to explain that the latter is. 

When explaining what Cognitive Overhead means, David Lieb uses the definition coined by web designer and engineer in Chicago David Demaree: Cognitive Overhead — “how many logical connections or jumps your brain has to make in order to understand or contextualize the thing you’re looking at.”
Source: [Cognitive Overhead, Or Why Your Product Isn’t As Simple As You Think](https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/20/cognitive-overhead/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&curator=MediaReDEF)

The first mechanical keyboard I tried was a cheaper Coolermaster one. Apart from not having the numerical keypad, it was a conventional keyboard layout. I realized back then I do not miss the numpad at all because I pretty much never use it anyway. So, it's actually one less thing to worry about, and thus less cognitive overhead to me.

Afterwards, I decided to use an Ultimate Hacking Keyboard. It was a split keyboard - literally, the left and the right sides can be split, joined by one cable. It was a bit of cognitive overhead, but not that much. I could get used to it in a couple of days. The lack of separate arrows and function keys got more time to get used to, though. Fortunately, it had a wonderful "mouse mode" which let me use the keyboard as a mouse. I ended up learning to use the mouse mode instead of the arrow keys. So, a kind of tradeoff: the cognitive overhead of having to learn the positions of the different keys was compensated by using the mouse mode, which was simpler.

Unfortunately, I spilled coffee all over my UHK, and couldn't save it. I had to buy another keyboard, and decided to try... Moonlander Mark I. And damn, that was a cognitive overhead nightmare to me. The columnar layout was the first one, but not so much: I surprisingly got used to it in a matter of hours. Having to use thumb keys to get access to arrows and function keys was a bit too much to me, though. I know other people get used do it, but I was actually getting scared of hitting the wrong key and press delete instead of Home/End for example. The thumb keys were very uncomfortable as well, so yet another cognitive overhead issue to me. I decided to sell it and buy a... Dygma Raise. Why didn't I pick a more conventional keyboard? I don't know, I just wanted to try something different.

Dygma Raise is amazing. Build quality is top-notch, it's a sturdy beast, it's easy to customize and completely programmable. The thumb keys were much better positioned and easier to use. I thought I was going to get used to it, but I slowly realized I actually did not like non-conventional keyboards at all! Needing to press a modifier key to get access to arrows, home/end, F1...F12 keys was slowly draining some mental health out of me. Why? You guessed it... cognitive overhead!

What I now understand is that I was fighting against decades of muscle memory. Using a more conventional keyboard layout for an hour is enough for me to get all my muscle memory back to normal. I bought a Logitech G912 TKL (TenKeyLess, meaning without the numerical pad because that's one thing I don't miss) this time. I'm not telling you to not use mechanical keyboards at all, but just keep in mind that cognitive overhead is a big thing that causes a lot of stress. It might pay off in the end, but sometimes the price is too high.