I would contend that for the many reasons listed in Chapter 5, a new optimized but radically different keyboard layout would not succeed in the Arabic speaking world. Millions of people are already trained on the current design and there would be great resistance to change. However, a layout that is not radically different than the current keyboard standard, which repairs the problematic letters that are fairly frequent yet hard to reach, would succeed, since it would sound feasible to re-train to a new standard that only re-allocates ten seriously problematic characters, but in return provides significant improvements in terms of typing speed, comfort, error rate, and muscular strain. This study therefore favors the Second Design, of the two designs proposed.
The basic Arabic keyboard is already based on a reasonably efficient layout, except for a few problematic letters. The difference between Design 2 and the layout currently used in the Arab World consist of 10 characters. People who switch from the Arabic Apple Macintosh keyboard layout to the IBM-clone standard spend about 7 days adjusting, based on the experience of the author of this paper. Remedying these letters would achieve more bang-for-the-buck, and it would not be difficult for users to migrate and retrain. However, the design should be accompanied by a good marketing strategy. Basic research is one thing, but picking the winners in a dynamic economy is quite another. Forces to adopt this superior standard must be very strong. If manufacturers don’t find incentives and demand for the new design, it will fail.