Custom Keyboards

does anyone use them? or the stickers you can buy for regular keyboards? has it helped you learn the shortcuts and or sped up your work? what programs do you use it for?

Nope, no custom keyboard, no stickers.
I just remember stuff :)

At work people really don't understand keyboard shortcuts, they fail to understand how they can be more efficient than using the mouse and don't even remember the simple ones like CTRL+C, V, X and so on. Let alone the newer ones like Win+E, Win+L those pass them by.

Stickers, overlays, custom key caps, etc. have been around for a long time and never catch on for any length of time. They mean you are looking at the keyboard and not the screen for feedback. Sort of like having to look at you camera constantly to find the right button or control.

They were a number of companies that once upon a time did instruction to get people to stop using these 'aids' so they could be more productive. One product that I remember that an acquaintance made a living un-teaching people how to use was Word Perfect 5.0. Great text based word process/editing program but you had to remember a bunch of commands to be at all efficient. Too many users were trying to use key maps and color coded key cap systems to learn a special system. Didn't work.

I've seen few good modern (5-10 years maybe?) applications that don't have a pop up screen or mouse item that displays the most used key strokes combos or mouse/shift or mouse key combos for speed or efficiency.

Teaching keyboarding is now done through neuro-optical driven feedback reinforcement on screens. Two + generations now have the opportunity to key 100+ words a minute by the time they are 12 years old. And some of these urchins can just about do that much or more one handed with type-ahead assisted texting!

If you also mean the new letter layout keyboards they have expt'd with, I'd love to see them in use some day. The current keys were arranged to slow typists down so not to break the typewriters.