How a Few Custom Keycaps Make Keyboards More Ergonomic and Reduce Eye Movement by 35%

Abstract

Ergonomically designed devices for better workplace design get too little at-tention compared to the annual cost of long-term damage. To help workers better achieve their goals in their work environment, we explore small-step changes that any individual can make with many existing keyboards. We studied the keyboards that users have been using as their daily keyboards for at least a year. In an investigation with baseline and treatment phase we pro-vide the users with 800 keycaps of different shapes, colors and surfaces and let them experiment for 3 months during their daily work. The evaluation shows that users were able to reduce the time for daily operations by 12% and halve the number of looks at the keyboard.

Keywords: ergonomic device, case study, cognitive load, eye movement, ergonomic keyboard, workplace design

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001603