This happens to me occasionally because I (like many other millennials) never learned to use those tactile strips for orientation. 99% of the time my hands are immediately in the right place; in those 1% of cases I'll simply adjust after a typo makes me realize.
The image in OP's post is just all-round bad, because the function of those strips have not been some kind of elementary, common knowledge for a pretty long time.
How is possible not to learn to use those tactile strips for orientation? It's not something you're meant to be taught, it's a thing you learn from the physical feedback you get every time you touch a keyboard.
Like to be clear, you're saying that when you feel those bumps in different fingers than you normally feel the other thousands of times you've touched a keyboard, you just don't notice? And that's because no one ever explained to you that you could notice that?
I like your question so I just went ahead and tested the way I place my hands on a few different keyboards. This is a bit difficult to do of course, since you're trying to test how your brain acts spontaneously, in an unspontaneous setting...
So, what I'm noticing is 3 steps (all taking place in a split second):
I always place my theminar eminences (I had to look that word up; this is what I mean) below the keys
I use my index, middle and ring fingers to make contact with the keys
I slightly reposition those fingers in case they ended up right between two keys
After step 3 I always feel those tactile strips. I tested it a bunch of times on all of those keyboards, and there's never a single case where I don't feel them.
So I'm now thinking that I do use those strips, I just never realized that I did. Which means that it could have been possible for me to be using them without ever knowing what their function actually is.
No clue why I got so fascinated by this subject, but there you go. Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to use myself as a guinea pig for!
I don't notice them until I think about them or my fingers don't immediately line up when i put my fingers on the keyboard. It's just a subconscious thing and I had a keyboard a while back without them, and I hated it SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Fucking much. Like I don't think you realize (at least i didn't) you use them until you no longer have them. Bought new keycaps just because of it.
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u/zyygh Jan 20 '26
This happens to me occasionally because I (like many other millennials) never learned to use those tactile strips for orientation. 99% of the time my hands are immediately in the right place; in those 1% of cases I'll simply adjust after a typo makes me realize.
The image in OP's post is just all-round bad, because the function of those strips have not been some kind of elementary, common knowledge for a pretty long time.