I’m sorry I haven’t been more chatty on the forum over the past few weeks. Between trying to push on manufacturing and the baby coming any day now, I’ve been…distracted.
It didn’t occur to me that one would type WASD with anything other than the “right” fingers for touch-typing, though I suspect that says more about me not being a gamer than anything else.
I think it’s almost universal to use ring/middle/index which leaves pinky free for shift/ctrl/alt but keeping thumb on space.
Yes; this is what I had imagined, and which led me to the various concerns voiced above.
Might also be worth mentioning that intuitively I tend to home myself using the left pinky on the left edge/side of the shift key to compensate for the lack of a homing bump in this scenario.
Right. That sounds like I’m just strange then. Of course, the Model 01 is designed around that particular strangeness.
It would…not be comfortable to use those fingers for those keys given the layout and keycaps.
I don’t think we’re really going to know whether my plan is right or wrong until we get you guys your hardware and you can spend time with it.
The current plan is that anybody who’s being friendly and active on the forums will be able to opt for one of the keyboards from the 100 unit pilot run (presuming of course, that we owe you a keyboard already 
At that point, we’ll all be much more on the same page and can make better choices about the right thing for the future.
I hesitate to suggest any additional work to anyone about to become a parent (I have some experience with that), but if someone conducted a poll of future Keyboardio users about finger placement on the WASD keys for gaming, and it showed, say, 95% shift their hands by a key to use their index fingers instead of pinkies, would that make you want to change the default?
For myself, the default is irrelevant; I’m planning something radically different. But I will say that the games that I’ve played that use those keys (Minecraft comes to mind) clearly assume the pinky is free to hold down shift some of the time, while simultaneously using the WASD keys for movement, and the thumb on the spacebar. The right hand isn’t available, because it’s on the mouse. Those games wouldn’t be playable with the default keymap without shifting the hand to the left from the typing position. They also won’t be playable with the default keymap on a Model 01, but I’d be surprised if the vast majority of PC gamers don’t use ring/middle/index fingers on movement keys.
Anyone who wants to use a Model 01 for those sorts of games is going to have to do a bunch of customization anyway, and it’s not clear how relevant that is for the mouse emulation, anyway…
Hi Michael,
See my comment above about wanting to talk about this after the PVT units go out and get into folks hands. Especially since this is something that’s not going on the keycaps, changing it now is just not something we’ve got the bandwidth to consider.
Best,
Jesse
I worded that poorly. I intended to present a question for you to think about, not one to be answered now.
Heh. No worries 
I expect we’re going to learn a LOT in the first few months after folks get their keyboards.
“No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
—Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (paraphrased)
Excellent points from all. Given that nothing for the mouse is intended to be printed, this can definitely be shelved until later.