"If you go look at an airplane cockpit, where actual research was done into how to optimize user interfaces so that the pilot will not be confused under stress, you will see that there is a separate button for everything. There is no "shift key", no different modes. If you need to use it, there is a button for it. To someone who has not learned how to use that UI, it appears alien and unfriendly. But the the trained pilot it is the pinnacle of perfection. "

My design professor used cockpits as a example of bad UI. Grown over the years and understood only by repetive drill and not at all intuitive.

So there might have been research to better it, but I doubt there was a major redesign, or was there?