1.

Introduction
In this information-technology age, everyday tasks are more and more rel
ated to computer. That ranges from basic jobs such as providing food recipes fo
r housewives to complicated ones such as analyzing laboratory experimental data
for scientists and engineers. This popularity of computer means that the time o
ne has to spend with computer would be a lot more than in the past.
Until now, the computers and computer peripherals in the market have been made a
ccording to the same design as the ones invented decades ago when computers are
used only in large-scale scientific projects or big corporations. That means fo
r most people the ergonomic value of these products obviously was not taken into
account when designing them. Fortunately, at the moment, more companies are tr
ying to change the way people work with computer by marketing a number of ergono
mic products most notably keyboard, mouse and monitor. There are ergonomic keyb
oards, mice and monitors being released all the time. The reason why the focus
is on these products is that they are the parts of computer one interfaces with
the most while working with computer.
The subject of whether these ergonomic keyboards, mice, monitors and other produ
cts really work attracts a lot of regular computer users. Thus, studies dedicat
ed to it have been done. This report is based on one of the studies about an er
gonomic keyboard from a manufacturer called inesis.
This study looks not only on the effect of the keyboard on the users' body by me
an of electromyographic activity but also on the learning rate of the users chan
ging to this new style of keyboard. This is very useful since slow learning rat
e would lead to the decrease in effectiveness of work.
Introduced in 1868 by Christopher Sholes, computer keyboard is still the primary
data entry mode for most computer users. With the increase of computer, hence
keyboard, usage at the moment, these problems of the keyboard users known as ope
rator stress problems have developed. This is a kind of cumulative trauma disor
ders which is mainly caused by working excessively or repetitively with the same
thing, keyboard, in this case, in the same position for a long period of time.
This kind of disorder is considered to be the most expensive and severe one occ
urring in office environment.
This leads to an amount of alternative designs introduced in the market with the
main intention of reducing muscular stress required for typing. The reason why
these designs have not yet replaced the old one is because of the familiarity o
f the users to the old design. This means an amount of retraining time is requi
red to familiarize the users to a new design of keyboard and thus the one requir
ing less time is likely to be the choice.
This study main objectives are to measure and analyze initial learning rate and
electromyographic activity, explained later, while using an alternative design o
f keyboard, the inesis Ergonomic Computer eyboard (figure1.) These data are t
hen used to compare to the standard computer keyboard, the old design, to see if
it is worth the time and money spent on the new product.
The electromyographic signals used to examine the muscle activities in this stud
y are signals generated by muscles. These signals can sometimes be used to cont
rol artificial body limbs especially ones requiring sensitive or complicated deg
ree of control such as rotary or grasping motion. Systems that use such signals
are called myoelectric systems.
The inesis keyboard utilizes the same QWERTY layout as the standard design so t
hat users do not have to relearn typing all over again. The key ergonomic featu
res of this keyboard are:
· The distance between centers of the halves of the inesis keyboard is approximat
ely 27 cm, reducing the angle of adduction of the wrists to near zero for most a
dults.
· The keypads slope downward from inside to outside edge, and are concave to bette
r fit the natural shape of the operator's hands. The keys form straight columns
and slightly curved rows.
· The keyboard features a built-in forearm-wrist support extending approximately 1
4 cm from the home row to the edge.
· The keyboard features separate thumb-operated keypads to redistribute the worklo
ad from the little fingers to the thumbs. These keypads consists of the enter,
space, backspace, delete and combination (ctrl and alt) keys.
· Detachable numeric/cursor pad.
· Integral palm supports.
· Shorter reach for function keys.

Figure 1. The inesis Ergonomic Computer eyboard.

2. Details
2.1 Materials and methods
There were 6 female professional typists participants of age 29 to 52 an
d typing experience of 10 to 32 years involved in this experiment. Typing speed
in words per minute, typing accuracy in percentage of characters typed correctl