The initial mental effort is high. But the trigrams are hashed to the letters on the keyboard. so "con" is hashed to for example Lower + C. So that helps. Also - after sometime you start seeing the common 3/4-grams - tion , the, and etc. Then it starts to become like a game with a dopamine feedback loop. Every time you hit 2 keys and get 3 or 4 letters out - you start getting a high.
>Out of curiosity, what is your motivation behind the experiment?
I watched a video of NoThisIsJohn typing at 200+ words per minute. I know i cant hit those speeds, but i was wondering what hacks i could do to the keyboard to get as fast as i can.
I just wanted to hack typing. I even thought of double pressing keys - for example bigrams. I came up with a new layout. When i read about the norman layout - it is criticised for same finger bigrams. But what i thought is, if I put the bigram keys near each other - then I would be able to press those with a single finger press - if the finger overlaps the 2 keys on the edge. but for that you need key wells - even at the edges of the keys - to give that tactile feeling. Similar to what the thinkpad has at the edge of the G, H and B keys . This would allow you to press 2 keys (and maybe more with a correctly designed keycap set) at the same time. But I would have to design new keycaps for something like this. And I thought of writing to Signature plastic - but I dont think i have that much money right now - but maybe a little later.
I also thought of 3 dimensional approach. Which is to insert vowel keys between 2 keys - exactly like the thinkpad Red trackball - but at a lower height as compared to the bigram consonants. This would require a special MCU and n-key rollover detection - to check if the 3rd key is pressed. If you want to press 3 keys - you would have to press deeper - so that the deeper sandwiched vowel key also gets depressed.
It would need a new PCB design and I started reading up and watching videos on PCB design and Keyboard design.
Anyways, If any Keyboard designer is reading this - reach out to me
