Engram: Crowdsourced Typing Preference Data for Keyboard Layout Optimization

Crowdsourced typing preference data from a study that derived ergonomics objectives from user preferences. The dataset includes materials for the Engram approach to optimizing keyboard layouts for English and Spanish, created by Arno Klein and last updated in May 2026. It contains data, software, documentation, and layouts totaling 10.6 MB.

Use Cases

• Optimizing keyboard layouts for specific languages based on n-gram frequencies and user preferences.
• Comparing the performance of new keyboard layouts against existing ones using derived comfort metrics.
• Studying the relationship between typing speed and user-reported comfort preferences.

Strengths

• Dataset includes a comparison of the derived Engram-en layout against 31 other keyboard layouts.
• All data, software, documentation, and layouts are openly and freely available under a CC-BY-4.0 license.
• The study's methodology is based on crowdsourced human typing preference data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset's multimodal nature (PDF, MP4, JPG, XLSX, DOCX) may require multiple tools for full analysis.

Provenance

Source

Arno Klein via figshare

Collection Method

Crowdsourced typing preference data collection.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-21 09:31:15; freshness should be verified.