When Dell Usability Engineering Goes Horribly Wrong
Today I was reading Engadget like I normally do in the morning to check out all the latest gadgets that they scour the internet for. And I happened across this new keyboard design that Dell is releasing with their Vostro models in the UK. I don’t know about you, but I specifically stay clear of keyboards where the backspace key is crunched down to add the backslash key on the top row. But I have never seen this keyboard layout before, where the backslash key is on the bottom left of the keyboard. I think the usability engineer that designed this keyboard should be fired, that is assuming that Dell didn’t randomly toss keys at the keyboard and let them stay where they fell.
This design has to be experienced because me describing it doesn’t do it justice for how bad of a design it is.
US Version
UK Version
Somebody may want to mention this blunder on Dell Idea Storm.
Tags: Bad Design, Dell, Useability
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May 1st, 2008 at 8:07 am
When Dell Usability Engineering Goes Horribly Wrong…
You’ve been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com…
May 1st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
US keyboard… notice the lack of “Alt Gr” and you might understand why.
Nothing wrong, your simply lack knowlegde about keyboards :p
May 1st, 2008 at 8:17 pm
… and yes, product images are in 9/10 cases with american keyboard layout.
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:58 am
Claus,
As you will notice the “Alt Gr” key is still on that keyboard, it just replaces the right ALT key on all non-US keyboards. So again I assert, why did they move the backslash key on the keyboard and change the international standard for the QWERTY keyboard layout. The issue here is that Z key is under the S and D instead of the standardized A and S keys, check out all the keyboard layouts for your self: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout
And it is pretty offensive to me that you assume that I know nothing about the international keyboard layouts, it is very narrow minded of you and you should be ashamed of yourself. I have many friends through out Europe and we constantly talk about the different perceptions of Europe vs. the US. And your narrow minded rants seem to justify how Americans feel about Europeans. Congratulations on being a stereotype.
Personally I like the extra room on the bottom row and the bigger shift key, and the enter key on the US keyboards is very comfortable, even though it is smaller. Plus for touch typists it maps well to DVORAK.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Hi Nick,
I’m a developer in the UK and I can confirm that both my Dell laptop and desktop workstation have the
backslash bottom-left, next to the Z key. I’m not suggesting that this is a good thing or anything-
it’s just something that we’ve been forced to get used to in the UK :-s
The crazy thing for a developer is that Apple UK keyboards have the backslash above the right shift,
and they @ symbol is swapped with the ” key (compared to UK PC keyboards)… This is a pain for
developers switching between the two - don’t even ask about #.
Perhaps Claus was a little unnecessarily short with you.
– Scott