Colours and ergonomics

[Hak Foo]

I notice that over time, keyboards (for a standard x86 box) started as two-tone greys, made a brief stop at solid white/beige, and ended up at solid black.  The second change was clearly "to match the black PC and monitor", and the first one was likely an economization feature...

I'm curious if anyone has studied the effect of going with different colour pairs, or solid colour caps, on performance?  I always figured two-tone caps offered some minor benefit for locating where the user is, especially when dealing with the low-traffic sections of the board, like the function row and number pad.

[crthell]

I can't speak for everyone here, but as a touch typist it doesn't matter to me. My grandma, who is a hunt and peck typist, is able to read the text on a two tone beige keyboard much better than a solid black one. It seems like everything PC related is black these days. I wonder if grey will make a comeback...

[davkol]

Pad-printing on my thinkpad has surpringly good contrast... and so do beige Cherry doubleshots. But it really doesn't matter, because if you have to look at your keyboard, you're doing it wrong. ^.~

[oneproduct]

Doesn't really help, but it's certainly amusing to look at: http://imgur.com/a/Fcm0M

[davkol]

I wish I had a rainbow vomit keyboard...

[Lanx]

don't ppl have to be touch typists on an ergonomic keyboard? i mean otherwise, idon't know just wouldn't seem worthwhile.