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I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

electronicmaterialsoffice.com

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Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#141

Post by DocTomoe »

HHKB user here. I like the idea, but there are some things that seem weird.

- Why are the numbers larger than the character glyphs? Feels a bit "preschool", imho.

- What exactly is the "rotary encoder" for? It's a "feature" I haven't seen on keyboards before, and given it extends so prominently... I would be careful with travelling with this device.

- talking about travelling: a built-in battery means I need to charge this thing. I'd personally much rather have a standard 2xAA battery compartment for power cells I can get basically anywhere and not charge my keyboard.

- I love the mechanical slider for selecting BT channels.

- from a design perspective: If you use a serif font for the logo, and none for the key descriptions, this leads to some level of optical chaos. I'd go for one or the other, but not both.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#142

Post by 97s »

So this isn't an attack or anything, but that website makes me just click off. It is hard to see any real information about the keyboard, I couldn't even find a picture of the whole keyboard on the landing page to look at. I think the people who want a low profile minimal keyboard probably also just want simple website.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#143

Post by joebergeron »

Very beautiful. Seems to take a lot of inspiration from the likes of RAMA but with a design language entirely your own. I personally love when design choices in products like this (read: mechanical keyboards) are highly opinionated and stylized. For what it’s worth, I prefer many of the choices you’ve made here to those of RAMA, whose keyboards I already use, so I would absolutely be interested in this.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#144

Post by Lendal »

layer8 wrote: post #35

Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I’d also imagine that one is prone to bump into the rotary knob if one is not fully conditioned to that keyboard. I applaud the T-shaped cursor block and the full-sized function keys, although it would be us…

There's a lot of wasted space on the right side of this keyboard where they could have easily put the Del/PgUp/PgDn keys right there. I don't know why they didn't.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#145

Post by layer8 »

badRNG wrote: post #93
layer8 wrote: post #35

Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I’d also imagine that one is prone to bump into the rotary knob if one is not fully conditioned to that keyboard. I applaud the T-shaped cursor block and the full-sized function keys, although it would be us…

> and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I'll bite; how useful is the Menu key really? Is there something in your workflow that is benefitted by having it? Totally agree with Home/End/Insert/Delete being required on any keyboard I use.

I use it all the time in IDEs, File Explorer, Word/Excel/Outlook, basically everywhere there are context menus based on keyboard focus. It reduces the need to use the mouse, in particular for functions that are only available via the context menu and not via a main menu. It can also be quicker because you just press Menu followed by a letter key to invoke the function, and it’s easier on the hands because no modifier keys are involved.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#146

Post by jinto36 »

Aethylia wrote: post #25

I think it looks beautiful, but have to echo the comments about not having the home, end, pgup, pgdown + numpad keys making it impractical. Would 100% get this if it had a full sized version.

I agree on the numpad. I do bioinformatics/data science work that sometimes involves some manual spreadsheet surfing and definitely use the numpad. A lot of numerical identifiers for genes that you end up incidentally memorizing after a while, and want to ctrl/cmd-F for.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#147

Post by neoberg »

layer8 wrote: post #35

Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I’d also imagine that one is prone to bump into the rotary knob if one is not fully conditioned to that keyboard. I applaud the T-shaped cursor block and the full-sized function keys, although it would be us…

Yep, everyone is different indeed. I've been using 30% keyboards (30, 33 or 36 keys) for 3+ years now. I used 40's for around 2 years before that. Now I can't stand any keyboard that requires my hands to move from the home position. Also being able to carry my keyboard to anywhere is a big plus for me.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#148

Post by samatman »

layer8 wrote: post #108
gwd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I've been using the HHKB keyboard [1] for over a year now, and I absolutely love it. You simply have to re-map your muscle memory for "PgUp" to be a chord (involving the function key naturally). I'd argue…

I’ve used the HHKB for a while in the late 90’s, but in the end it wasn’t for me. Chords tend to trigger my RSI, and a reduced need for chords just means better ergonomics to me.

Something I've been actively working on is chording with two hands.

For an example, I noticed that I habitually type & with only my right hand, twisting my wrist to press shift and 7 at the same time, which is awkward and painful if I do it too often.

The solution being to use the left pinky for the shift key and the right middle for the 7/&.

I agree the less chords the better, but for what's left, making sure chords are either ergonomic by themselves, or two handed, is a good way to keep typing for longer with less injury.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#149

Post by 3np »

Like many others in your assumed target demographic I have very specific requirements - in my case (apart form the rest, which is spot on) staggered, split, and (wishfully) tentable, 4+ thumb cluster.

That being said, if I were in the market for around this layout, I'd be all over your design. I think you nailed it. I especially like what you did with the arrow keys, in that they don't stand out from the rest of the keys so you can get creative in that area easier. Around this form factor pretty much everyone (I never had a If you'd be able to offer even more enthusiast-targeted layout variations than iso/ansi (which is already neat) that could get really interesting, I think. You'd surely build brand fast. But I also see how that could be unfeasible while keeping price within range for the non-hardcore.

Things like that I think it comes down a lot to what market niche and scale you're aiming for.

I can see how this could go well as-is in a Kickstarter.

EDIT: Oh, one thing actually: I'd consider adding a dongle option. Bluetooth can be a hassle at times and a verified compatible reliable (be it BT or some other protocol) plug that Just Works whatever is running on the host is great. So I don't have to scramble for a cable to get into the boot menu.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#150

Post by reflexco »

Festro wrote: post #44
tauntz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only people who didn't WFH much, or didn't have jobs involving any data entry at all could do without a numpad. I'm (mostly) a software dev for 15+ years and I've never felt the need for a numpad. I'm curious now - have I been really lucky that none of my gigs have ever involved any substantial numerical data entry? Do other devs have to constantly do that so it justifies the larger keyboard (which is off-center an…

I do technical marketing (SEO, ads, analytics) and if I am ever in a spreadsheet I gravitate to the numpad for any numerical data entry. It's like touch-typing, superior way of doing it once you've learnt. No need to use shift for simple calculations, one-handed number typing, using my left hand to tab into the next cell, etc. Customer services teams take down phone numbers and enter financial info better with a nump…

Ergonomics is not vanity. Most 100% keyboards don't allow you to have one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse with good posture, which I'm sure for the average user is a more common thing to do than entering long strings of numbers.
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