A Comparative Evaluation of the Electronic Keyboard Synthesizer User Interface

Abstract

A great deal of progress has been made in recent years in understanding the variables that affect the human-system interface. User interface principles have been developed and applied to the design of many military and industrial products. However, these principles are often not applied systematically to the design of the user interface of consumer products. The electronic keyboard synthesizer represents a type of consumer product in which the accurate and timely exchange of information between the system and the user during real-time system operation is essential for optimizing overall system performance. There are many similarities between the mental and physical demands of operating electronic keyboard synthesizers and operating other consumer products, such as personal computers. In many ways, synthesizers have evolved into single purpose computers. Accordingly, an understanding of the factors that affect keyboard synthesizer user interfaces can make a contribution to the understanding of consumer product interface design. This paper provides a brief, nontechnical overview of the evolutionary development of the keyboard synthesizer, discusses three technological developments that have had a major impact on the evolution of the synthesizer user interface, illustrates representative synthesizer user interface designs, and presents a comparative evaluation of the designs with respect to their adherence to user interface principles.