The Zergotech Story and the Origins of the Freedom Ergonomic Keyboard
My name is Nathan Khoury and I am the founder of Zergotech Pty Ltd and the creator behind the Zergotech Freedom.
I have a somewhat successful career in banking though I graduated in an engineering discipline and have maintained my passion for gadgetry and technology ever since. So it might seem odd that I, along with a few like-minded entrepreneurs and tech-heads, got together to implement my solution to the problem of debilitating wrist pain.
Spending many hours at my desk typing away on sub-par technologies, I began to suffer career threatening injuries to my wrists and fingers. I was told by doctors that I had an early onset of arthritis in the form of chronic inflammation in my joints. To try to prevent and relieve this pain I tried almost every ergonomic device in the market, and while some some did help, they were not very effective. With mice I bought track balls, vertical mice, and joysticks. Nothing worked. Being right handed, I undertook the arduous task of learning to use the mouse with my under-utilized left hand making me ambidextrous. With keyboards I bought almost all the mainstream keyboards from brands such as Microsoft, Logitech and others but their lack of true ergonomic design was disappointing (no split keyboards, no tenting options, full 104 key designs etc). Further, their build quality was extremely poor and I was often caught at work taking apart these keyboards to try and manipulate their design to get them working properly (for example, I once took apart the long spacebar and cut it in half to stop it from catching on their useless stabilizers).
Eventually my wrist ended up in a brace.
No longer able to twist and stretch my wrist while in a brace, my hand was always forced to be aligned with my forearms — a healthy position. Reaching for the keys on the far right of the keyboard by contorting my wrist alone was no longer possible. My entire forearm was required to move to strike the more distant keys while keeping my wrists aligned. But the friction between the brace and desk added a different kind of physical stress. I needed a smoother glide. Imaginatively enough, I put a calculator cover under my wrist brace which allowed me to slide over to any key and the idea for the sliding palm rests was born. My wrists were now straight, all the keys were within easy reach, and all the while my arms were resting on the desk removing the fatiguing action of lifting your entire arm. Despite my handy calculator (which was not being used for the purpose it was intended!), the brace could not be a long term solution. I needed something better than the current ergonomic offerings and I found myself down the rabbit hole of mechanical keyboards. There I found like-minded obsessives about keyboards and even some just as obsessed about ergonomics as I was. There were a few ergonomic keyboard solutions in the mechanical space, but I found them either lacking in true effective solutions (e.g. some were lacking in tenting options, programmability, misaligned keys), or were super-alien in their appearance that I found too intimidating to use. The world needed a halfway point. A keyboard that had a superb build quality (which most mechanical keyboards offer), that was not too intimidating to the average office user, while still delivering a full fledged and effective ergonomic solution.
The keyboard needed to be (i) somewhat familiar (ii) have multiple tenting options (iii) customizable with programming features (iv) employ a “symmetry of reach” principle where only the keys that were not equally offset to your fingers were corrected, (v) a full sized keyboard including F row keys, (vi) employ the highly effective sliding palm rests, and (vii) be a mechanical keyboard to ensure longevity and an enjoyable typing experience. The idea for the Freedom keyboard was born.
Though an idea it remained,… until…
I was made unemployed. No longer in the comfort trap of having a secure income, and by the grace of fortune to have accumulated some savings, I took the opportunity to gather backers and make this keyboard a reality. To assist with this project, we commissioned Boost Design, a Sydney based company with a highly talented team of electronic and product design specialists. I must make a special shout out to Alex Matthews, an extremely talented, dedicated, and approachable industrial design engineer with whom this product may not have seen the light of day. Boost’s electronics engineer, Liam Meagher, made a fantastic job of our PCBs and electronics design and Michael Potas provided some great start-up guidance as he has done for years with many clients. As for the firmware, that was designed from scratch by yours truly. Stemming from my engineering and programming background, and with ample time on my hands, the programmability of the keyboard was built from the ground up. No reliance on community created software, this provided me the flexibility to create the code in a manner that was logical and efficient such that it achieved extreme flexibility in its capabilities. There were many other contributors to this project and we could not have achieved this without the backing of generous supporters.
This idea became a project which became a product which has now become a growing business. It took time and money and prototyping, and then some more time and more money and more prototyping,… and then even more time and even more money and even more prototyping. The costs of the design process, manufacturing and tooling, company set-up, and our own insistence on attention to detail, putting costs second so as to produce a near perfect product, made the time and money worth it.
The Freedom was born.
The Freedom has so far proven itself on the international stage. In Zergotech’s first year, and with our first product, we have won two international design awards — (i) the German based Red Dot design awards, and (ii) a Gold accolade in Australia’s highest design competition, the Good Design awards. The Freedom is now being stocked in multiple ergonomic resellers Australia wide, which shows the confidence our resellers have in this new product from a new startup — not something resellers usually adopt. Online reviews from reputable websites have been awesome and there are many more to come. Professional ergonomist and occupational therapists are now recommending the Freedom to their clients and have been highlighting the product in their own blogs and newsletters. And finally but not lastly, our early customers and adopters have been nothing but tremendously supportive providing extremely thoughtful feedback and encouragement.
It’s been an exciting, challenging, stressful, rewarding and educational experience for me personally, and for all the contributors and staff involved. Things have continued to turn up for me personally. My banking career is back on track. I have a small yet efficient and wonderful team powering Zergotech’s daily operations while I run the business management. Sales are promising and growing. And I have finally resolved my wrist pain.
On Medium.com, we will be using this platform to post customer reviews. They will be submitted to Zergotech and posted by us on their behalf and with their permission to collate these reviews in a single forum. I thank all the supportive customers who have taken the time to write these reviews.
For any questions about Zergotech and the Freedom ergonomic keyboard, do reach out to admin@zergotech.com, and visit www.zergotech.com to learn more about the keyboard.
Best regards,
Nathan
