Determining how difficult a word is to type on a QWERTY keyboard

Question

I'm looking for a reasonably simple algorithm to determine how difficult it is to type a word on the QWERTY layout.

The words would not necessarily be dictionary words, so a list of commonly mistyped words or the like is not an option. I'm sure there must be an existing, well-tested algorithm, but I can't find anything.

Can anyone offer any help or advice? I'm coding the algorithm in python, but any other language or pseudo-code is welcome.

Answer 1

There is this comparison between QWERTY, Colemak and Dvorak layouts, which calculates the distance between the keys typed, the percentage of keys on the same hand, etc. with source code in Java. These metrics in combination should give a very good estimate of the 'typeability' of a word.

Answer 2

I don't have any algorithms to propose, but a few hints:

• I use both hands to type, meaning that the keyboard is roughly split in 2 halves, it is frequent that I have coordination issues between the two hands, meaning that each type the letters in the "right" order but the interleaving is wrong. This is especially true if one hand has more letters to type than the other, typical: "the" because the left hand type t and e and the right hand types h.

• "slips" are frequent, meaning that often time one is going to miss the key and hit another key instead; "addition" / "deletion" are frequent too, ie typing a supplementary key or not pushing hard enough --> this mean that (obviously) the more letters there is, the harder it is to get the word right.

• mix case makes it harder, it requires synchronization between pushing CAPS and hitting the keys, so it's likely that the nearby keys won't have the right upper/lower case.

Hope this helps...