การประเมินสมรรถนะการใช้แป้นพิมพ์การยศาสตร์โดยอาศัยหลักการกฎของฟิตส์

Abstract

The health problems of computer users have been increasing, especially the hand and wrist problem causing non-neutral posture while using keyboard for long period, such as the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS). In order to reduce this problem, ergonomic keyboards have been developed for reducing awkward arm and wrist posture. Although ergonomic keyboards are considered to reduce CTS, the complex shape of them may affect user’s familiarity and their typing performance. Typing performance evaluations are usually based on total typing speed without considering of the difficulty of manuscript which may affect the typing speed. In this study, Fitts’ law concept was applied to compare typing performances of two ergonomic keyboards and a conventional keyboard. 10 volunteer participants with touch-typing ability who never used ergonomic keyboard were recruited. The indices of difficulty of typing was developed by sampling alphabets by their average typing time with linear regression, with R2=0.99, the alphabet keys were divided into 7 groups. There was significant difference in learning curve between ergonomic keyboard and conventional keyboard. The typing performance of both ergonomic keyboards is also higher than the conventional keyboard.