Roaming Keyboards
Where it all started
I never believed I would be able to finish the race. They were years of a lot of work and hard study that I knew deeply that I had to finish. Doing it helped me a lot and it is what today enables me to think that I can achieve any goal I set for myself. He received me and at that moment I had the vitality and energy to undertake. Still young and eager to do things, I entrusted myself to make my dreams come true. |
I knew by that time that my real vocation was around Industrial Design and Software Engineering. Jumped into by participating in an Industrial Design contest from Microsoft called StartSomethingPC with my friend Hernan Fretto one of the best designers in Argentina with a deep understanding in ergenomics. So we started a reasearch.
Eureca Moment
I was at that time when I though about dynamic interfaces when suddenly Hernan told me: Why don’t we do it touch screen? Better, multitouch. … He blew my mind 💥.
An eureca moment in life. I knew about networks, inftaestrucure, servers, thin clients, terminals, phones, hardware, software, data and interfaces. Just needed the spark to undertand the big picture and see the vision, to the the big picture about the next interaction with computers coming. Time said I was right.
Imagine that the movie Minority Repost just came out in 2022 and by then it was like science fiction. We are talking about that in 2006. The mobile scene was governed by Nokia for years running the classic violet J2ME Os and I was thinking about multiple agnostic interfaces. It was mind blowing. Controlling computers with your fingers, doing gestures on any screen, pads and keyboards everywhere. I dram big, I was so exited 🥳. |
However there was no such technology as multitouch in the market yet. Touchscreen technology was bearly used on cashiers. We could least imagine that a telephone was going to replace our personal computers. The IPhone 1st Generation was introduced by Steve Jobs at MacWorld keynote in 2007 therefore it was difficult to forecast where this would have ever be a reality. But I did. I was into computers, user experience, technology, design and specially creativity my main drive in life.
Research
As Industrial Designers we have been teached in every design and creative process to perform a good reasearch before starting any conversation. In this particular time, and since I had a determination to move ahead with my own ideas, I spent a significant amount of time searching about software. I knew, from my technical backgroun, that I was ahead any other designer in order to really build any idea we could come up with, I was very confident.
Hardware Research
We focused on computer interfaces, all interfaces first, then specially how we input information into computers. After a preliminar a hardware research Research StartSomethingPC (12/02/2006) throowed that input specifically keyboards had a lot of space for improvement. The overall research about interfaces showed us value in two products:
The Russian Optimus Keyboard (still active) with an innotvative key customization key display via sofware and an a novel touch sensitive keyboard from Fireworks with an erganomic fold and touch sensivitivyty. |
Multitouch Hardware
The only available multitouch product in 2016 was the the legendary Lemur multitouch MIDI/OSC controller from the French company JazzMutant, a pioneer company and products. The controller was created for mixing music and it was beutiful, in fact the singer Bjork used one. Who I got in contact with and was pleased to meet their creators specially Pascal Joguet, who I admire. |
Without knowing nothing about hardware developement or manufacturing but with what I understook was a great idea I looked on the Internet to find companies who could help me develop my agnostic multitouch device. I came across Moto Labs called the company and I had the pleasure to meet Gregor Berkowitz a senior product and technology leader (GBA present) who very kindly had the kindness to listen. Since I could defend myself pretty well with English (see ) I explained the idea in detail.
Softwar Research
As a Network Administrator and Software Developer I was very familiarized with different technologies (Servers and Software) that I could use in order to achieve a proof of concept. I knew by then about thin terminals computers running Thin Client capable of controlling a remote desktop transmitted throught the network. It fitter perfectly into deploying pads, keyboards and screens into multiple touch screen devices handeled by a central server, multiplexing and routing input (keys, pointer coordinates and gestures) and output (desktop screens).
The software research for finding the best remote thin client technology showed that Nomachine was by far the most performant NX technology. It was designed to be used over slow connections such as dial-up modems. Worked like charm, no delay and the most important thing the core compression technology was released under the GNU GPL2 license Open-source software (OSS). I found that a free version called FreeNX was developed by Fabian Franz, a German developer who I contacted and joined the project becoming CTO of the venture and part of what would become PadKite.
Roaming Keyboards Concept
So I came up with an idea of a computer system for a smart home built with agnostic touch screen interfaces that could alternatively provide displays, keyboards, touchpads accordigly to the amount of devices, sizes and needs. Each setup would have a different functinality such as desktop, tablet, laptop with external keyboard. The system would run on thin client system or remote desktop allowing the resize of the display.
The concept of a roaming keyboard means that your keyboard, display or multitouchpad could roam around different devices allowing the best customization for the user prferred setup.
I imagined a future where all the glasses of a household could be turned into a computer screen to display thin client OS while controling it from a remote terminal with a keyboard or a touchpad, a multitouchad. Imagining at that time a world of mutlitouch interfaces was not trivial and it took me a lot of time of research and creativity that manifested itself in a prediction.
Patent
After my first drafts, I was very enthusiastic about filing my ideas so I started filing patent applications at the US office. As a result, I filed 7 patent application on the use of gestures and innovative dynamic interfaces. I have been granted with one patent related to the use of remote gestures to control smart TVs.
Thin terminal computer architecture utilizing roaming keyboard files
This patent describes a system that lets a special kind of computer talk to many smaller computers. The smaller computers have touchscreens and special software that helps people use them. The special software also changes the way the computers work depending on what people need. It’s like having different tools on a computer screen that you can use for different tasks, like typing or pointing. The big computer can talk to the small ones and help them work together smoothly, even when lots of people are using them at the same time.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090100129A1/en
. I started to put everything together, I imagined a world of touch screen and dynamic interfaces. I dram a world where interfaces all around us are connected to a server
I did not imagined how important touch screen technology would become such a standard specially when the iPhone was not launched yet.