A 48 hour challenge to improve what I already define as a great product.
I wanted to take a product I’ve been using for years, analyse it and improve it, whilst keeping a structured aesthetic. The two-day turnaround would provide a benchmark for what I could achieve in a tight timeframe.
Apple Keyboard 109 Keys A1048
My personal keyboard for 15+ years. How I define a great product differs from case to case but these are the areas that make its form and function significant to me:
Considered aesthetics - its crisp, purposeful, utilitarian and minimal design.
Scale - back in the day this gave you everything you needed, all scenarios and applications were considered.
Ergonomics - curved type angle is something they’ve moved away from but from a function point of view I can’t see why.
Tactility - a truly satisfying action to use, one that gives something back to the user.
Reliable - operational since 2005 and still in full working order... no planned obsolescence in sight.
Improvements
Efficiency - approximately 40% of this keyboard goes unused, and as desk space is finite that seems counterproductive. One major function I’d like to introduce is a small screen for quick sketches and annotations, as tablets inherently take up a lot of desk space.
Cables - other than gaming, there aren’t many use cases in which a cabled keyboard is necessary and therefore giving it Bluetooth capabilities would be preferable, freeing up desk space and making it more portable.
Cleanliness - the keyboard features a transparent outer casing that means you can see all the dirt collected inside, but you can’t get to it to clean it. Initially, I’d like to bring in a gloss white outer casing but this could also be an interesting area to look into the ease of disassembly and modularity.
WFH - as creatives at home spend such a large proportion of time on their screens, programming short-cuts to applications is becoming more popular. Due to the age and design of the original A1048 keyboard, that’s never been possible, so I’m looking to bring it up to speed in this short project.
Market trends
The resurgence of tactile and introduction of multifunctional keyboards.
Mechanical, dome switch and modular keyboards are trending big.
Brands like Work Louder are creating keyboards that customers can build from home. Offering a fully modular solution for creatives to add knobs, buttons, switches and sliders to make their work-from-home setup as efficient as possible.
Behance, Pinterest and Design Burger are also flooded with tactile, ‘satisfying to click’ designs. Harking back to the keyboards of the 2000’s, it’s offering the consumer a more engaging approach to working.
Rapid Ideation & Refinement
The final outcome after 48 hours.
