How can a French beginner who is used to a QWERTY keyboard adapt to a French layout?

HCI Redesign
1

Does muscle memory help or hinder?
How can it be designed to feel seamless for the user?

I just realized that I’m not very good at clearly defining research questions; I’m still at the stage of recognizing that this design is annoying and needs to be redesigned.
Anyway I want to propose it and share some findings related to this problem.

I described it to 7 ~ 10 people. One of my friends pointed out that the design is American-centric. I argued that the problem scenario is helpful for English native speakers in the Canadian French-speaking area who want to try French. Although I was aware of language differences, such as those with Russian or Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) keyboards which do not conform to the 26-letter QWERTY layout, I had indeed overlooked how the design reflects an American-centric perspective.

Excited and with a sense of delayed discovery, two years later, I found Xiaojun Bi’s Multilingual Touchscreen Keyboard Design and Optimization.

2

The paper emphasizes a different issue than the one that initially troubled me. There is still a learning curve involved, and I don’t want to waste my QWERTY muscle memory. However, it did provoke some thoughts, such as how the development of PCs and other technologies has transformed Pinyin from a temporary educational tool into a long-term input method. It also discusses the reason French uses the AZERTY layout. The article references a 2002 paper by Zhai, which mentioned the learning curve problem that initially troubled me.