Looking at various posts about hieroglyphics, it seems that relatively simple words or concepts would be represented by a string of symbols that would take far long to draw than their English translation. Even just looking at the evolution of English, it seems that words have trended toward being shorter as time went on. Is this just a layman noticing patterns that don’t actually exist or have languages become more efficient?
I wonder whether you've seen this thread that I started yesterday about Egyptian. If not, you might enjoy it. Whatever the case, you're exactly right. Typing hieroglyphs is easy and fast when you know the language. The computer makes all the shapes for you. Drawing complex hieroglyphs takes way too long and is extremely inefficient. In fact, "efficiency" is the term I use unapologetically as well, even in academic writing, where it can create controversy (as a possible value judgment, or an oversimplification, or a word that magically summons the pedant-dragon from his lair). I stand by it. Writing often needs to be efficient. People have to use it in their everyday lives. That's a big factor.
To make an even stronger claim, writing evolves. (That's the most powerful magic word. I feel the ground shaking. The pedant-dragon is awake!) Writing evolves in much the same way that animals do: random variation and non-random selection. That is a general algorithmic process, which depends in no way on the specifics of biology or DNA or anything else. Evolution also applies to spoken language and writing systems, among many other things. One of the forces behind non-random selection in the evolution of writing is the need for efficiency. There are other forces: aesthetics, tradition, elitism, cultural identity, etc., and these may work opposite to efficiency, but they don't erase it. Even languages that have long histories and tight connections to cultural identity are also subject to efficiency at the same time. These are competing forces that shape glyph evolution.
Egyptian is one such case. Very early on, Egyptian developed the Hieratic script for handwriting glyphs with ink and paper. Over time, this script further developed into the Demotic script. (See this webpage for some really useful samples of the three scripts that reveal the process.) If you want to dive deeper into these questions and see more about how I break down the various forces and their interactions, you might enjoy chapter 3, "Demotic Among the Egyptian Scripts" in my dissertation. I go into a lot of detail about the historical factors that created an environment for glyph evolution in Demotic. You can also discover the identity of the pedant-dragon if you read the footnotes ;)