Creation of a keypad design takes time, thought, troubleshooting and many hours of dedication. The best keypad design will meet the unique needs of the user while at the same time delivering convenience to many. It will flow well, feel smooth under the fingertips and allow for fast typing. Here are some main factors that must be taken into consideration when creating an optimal keypad design.
1. Choose Durable Yet Comfortable Materials
Many keys these days are still made of plastic, which can be hard to press and prone to breakage. Silicone keypads, on the other hand, present many benefits to the user, including ease of use, high quality and an affordable price tag. Silicone rubber is a popular choice due to the following features:
- Made of high-grade rubber and silicone materials.
- Can withstand the normal wear and tear of everyday use.
- Waterproof and dustproof.
- Comfortable, with ergonomic styling and soft, smooth keys.
- Cost effective over other materials.
- Able to integrate them into large-scale applications easily.
- Able to support Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) with or without back lighting.
- Available with enhanced options, such as choice of finishes like high gloss and laser-etched graphics.
Whether you own a manufacturing plant, hospital or retail store, you will enjoy the effects of silicone-rubber keypads that hold up to stress very well.
2. Consider Travel
In the keypad industry, this refers to how far the keys go down when you press them. The keyboards of modern laptops have comparatively little throw, which means they don’t go down too far when you push them. Mechanical keyboards have a distinct feel and deep throw, but today’s slimmer laptops and Bluetooth keyboards now feature mechanisms and switches made of rubber and plastic.
The membranes that connect the circuit are cheap and durable, are able to be waterproofed, and can fit inside extremely thin bodies, says Popular Mechanics.
3. Explore Discoverability
This refers to how easy it is for your fingers to find their way to the right keys without getting lost. Creating the baseline is easy enough, as you simply put the keys in the right places (remember the standard QWERTY layout?). But beyond that, subtler details of the layout and design are vital to consider.
You can take steps to improve the typing performance and discoverability of the keys. This has to do with pitch and dish. Pitch is the distance between the centers of each key, which will determine how roomy or cramped the fingers feels when using the keyboard. Dish is the concavity you can see on the top of each key. These inward-curving sides are designed to guide your fingers toward the center. However, you can also shrink them down and add more spacing around them to improve accuracy and typing performance.
Contact SiTech
Silicone Technology Corp is the premier expert in the manufacture of custom keypads and components. Our unique combination of technology and quality gives you a competitive domestic supply of custom keypads and other silicone rubber products. To learn more, contact Si-Tech today at 757-887-8488.
