How I designed a keyboard
Third part: prototype and renders
In previous article, I focused exclusively on one side — the front face. I found an interesting design, and the next step was to collect a list of essential functions and create a 3D model. However, at that stage, there were still some uncertainties. For example, how fast you could adapt to the layout, does the typing feel comfortable enough for long-time usage, and object ergonomics in general? My buddy Boris helped me to clarify some of them by building and configuring a working prototype of the keyboard.
After a few weeks of using it, my fingers eventually began to adapt muscle memory. However, I quickly realized that I had focused on compactness too much, which led to some miscalculations of the key sizes. They turned out quite small, even for my relatively small hands, and they were placed too close together, causing me to often press two keys at once. After recalculating and conducting a few quick tests, I found what I believe to be the perfect balance. Simultaneously, I read about the standardization of different input tools and found some alignments with my measures. I want to highlight a particular book, that became a real treasure and valuable source of information, called Human Engineering Guide for Equipment Designers by Wesley E. Woodson and Donald W. Conover. It’s a fascinating collection of guidelines and advice for designing various objects, including spaceship dashboards, keyboards, etc.
The triangular keys for the arrows, despite my friend’s skepticism, turned out to be fairly comfortable. To clarify, I wasn’t using all of them all the time, so their shape remains an open question. As older keyboards demonstrate, it’s been an open question for quite a while.
I think the best solution might be to forget about the triangular shape and simply allow the user in some way to adjust them as they prefer within these four spots. But I’ll come back to this later because I don’t consider it a big issue. Of course, objectively, this is nоt the most comfortable one, but let’s admit — it looks cool.
With the new key sizes, everything seems to be in the right place again. Boris’s prototype used a solid PCB with mechanical switches, which I found amazing. All that remained was to add various ports, an SD card reader, a battery, a cup holder…, and it’s done. But I couldn’t get rid of my desire for compactness, so I had to make sacrifices and find workarounds, relying on what was available on the market. I wish I could fit everything in, but the puzzle just wouldn’t come together until one day. After several attempts, I decided to “rip off the band-aid” and, for example, replace USB-A with a smaller USB-C, change the SD card reader to a tiny Micro-SD .
Now, I’m on the doorstep of building the first model. There’s a mountain of technical details ahead that I’m afraid to even think about. But I’ll try to dive into them and share the results in a future article.
I hope you still find this project interesting to follow. Special thanks to Sasha Shestakovych and his team for these fantastic renders. Also, a big thanks to everyone who’s asking questions, advising, and supporting me.
