Tag archive for ‘patent’
Preorder Art. Lebedev Optimus Maximus Keyboard
Three days ago, I posted about the imminent release of the Optimus Maximus Keyboard by the russian design studio Art. Lebedev. Now, the countdown on their website finally reached zero and we get to see the details of the 1500$ keyboard:
- Keyboard Dimensions: 53.7cm x 17.3cm x 3.8cm
- Key Dimensions: 2.02cm x 2.02cm
- Visible OLED area: 1.01cm
- Resolution of each key: 48px x 48px
- Frame Rate: min. 10 frames per second
- Color: 65536
- Viewing Angle: 160°
- Connection: USB2.0
- OS: Windows XP / Vista, Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher
To enhance the life of the OLED displays and the ribbon cables used to control them, Art Lebedev Studios decided to make every button a module consisting of a chip, the OLED display and a moving, transparent cap. Since only the plastic cap is moving, the displays have a much higher lifespan.
Preorders can be placed now. The price is US$ 1564 or approximately € 1257.
Tagged as keyboard, maximus, optimus, patent, review, russia, usability+ Categorized as Uncategorized
Apple’s Unobscured Touchscreen
Rain Noe wrote an article on Apple's new Touchscreen patent:
Touchscreens have one single but, as of yet, unadressed design flaw: your finger on the screen is obscuring the very elements you're interacting with. This has several implications for the user interface, for example buttons need to be quite large so you can still see them.
Never fear though, the clever designers from Cupertino have come up with a solution for this particular dilemma. It's still only a patent and I would be very surprised if this ever made it into a real product but it's nevertheless a cool and unique idea.
Basically it's an iPod or (i)Phone with a screen covering the whole front of the device. A transparent control layout on the screen allows interaction. The difference is, you're not touching the screen, you touch the back, the opposite side of the controls. A cursor is shown to give you visual feedback on the position of your fingers and if you press harder, the device registers it as a click.
Since your fingers end up on the back of the iPod anyway, simply by virtue of holding the thing, it sounds like a pretty good idea. The whole thing, especially the cursor and "press harder to click" function might take a bit of getting used to but I'm sure Apple's designers and engineers could come up with something.
Tagged as apple, design, feedback, patent, touchscreen, userinterface+ Categorized as Uncategorized