Human factors and behavioral science: Membrane keyboards and human performance

This paper describes systematic human factors research in which typing performance using a membrane keyboard and using a conventional, full-travel keyboard were compared for subjects representing different levels of typing proficiency. Membrane switch technology has become increasingly popular in many consumer-oriented products because of its low production cost and design flexibility. However, the absence of familiar key travel associated with membrane switches removes an important, direct source of feedback to the user with respect to specific keystrokes. Hence, the conventional wisdom has been that membrane switches without key travel are unacceptable for such keyboard applications as typing tasks. The results of the research discussed here indicate that for nontouch typists there was little difference in performance between keyboards. For touch typists, performance with the conventional keyboard was initially much better than with the membrane keyboard. Rapid learning resulted in improvement in typing performance with the membrane keyboard — both within an experimental session and across sessions — such that the advantage of the conventional keyboard over the membrane one for touch typists was reduced substantially, although not completely. Future work will be aimed at measurement of the additional improvement in performance that may result from extended practice with better-designed membrane keyboards.