QWERTY effect

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The QWERTY effect is a phrase commonly used to describe the cause of a sub-optimal (usually anachronistic) solution to a problem where logically superior alternatives apparently exist.

[edit] Background

The most commonly given example is also that by which the term derives its name - the QWERTY keyboard layout. The QWERTY keyboard was designed to space out letter pairs which are commonly typed in the English language, and thereby avoid jamming of the hammers in typewriters. However, computer keyboards have no such limitation and placing related keys like this only serves to slow typing speeds.

In contrast, other layouts, such as the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout are designed to maximise typing speeds - indeed, the Guinness world record typing speed (as of July 2005) was achieved using this layout. As such, the logical end to this analysis would be a period of changeover to Dvorak before mostly abandoning QWERTY. However, Dvorak has not become the dominant typing layout for several reasons, all related to the cost/benefit ratio for individuals changing to the new standard (these issues are well discussed here). As such, QWERTY will apparently continue to be the most popular keyboard layout, despite its apparent weaknesses, as it is "good enough" for a user's needs.

[edit] Examples

There are numerous conceivable other examples that could be given here. In biology, the weakness of the human spine, and the insensitivity of the human eye compared to other animals could be said to suffer from this effect. In these cases, there is a clear improvement possible in the "design" of the system, but this cannot occur because it would involve several steps performed in sequence which would produce less efficient systems (leaving the interim persons with disadvantages compared to others and so causing this phenotype to be removed from the population by any present competition for resources), the end effect of which being that the path to this design would likely never happen.

An example in technology would be companies not moving to another Computer architecture, because the cost of porting their applications and/or retraining staff to use the new architecture is prohibitive.