Google Japan has a history of joke keyboard concepts that challenge common notions of computer input. The last concept Gboard stick versionit places all the keys on the same row, so hunting and pecking can take a more linear approach.
As shown on Google Japan Youtube video below, it appears that Google Japan actually made a prototype of the long keyboard. Google won’t mass produce or sell it, but there is GitHub available files with open source firmware, circuit diagrams and design drawings to build the keyboard yourself. The GitHub page is careful to point out that “this is not an officially supported Google product.” Google Japan blog post on Saturday said it could make the Gboard Stick version with a 3D printer.
Google Japan video for Gboard Stick version.
As designed, the keyboard is an impressive 5.25ft (1600mm) long.. If you think that’s a long time, the company said the original prototype was 7.87 feet (2,400 mm) long. The keyboard uses 17 plates in total, including 16 for mounting the keys and one control plate.
Google Japan jokingly argues that this layout is more convenient for cluttered desktops, storage, and finding the right keys when typing. The Google Japan video shows the keyboard in an alphabetic layout, as a user initiates touch typing by memorizing the distance of individual keys from the left edge. Alternatively, it’s ‘easy’ to find P, for example, knowing it’s the 17th key from the left (the first key from the left is a seek button, not A). Surely, all of this is simpler than searching and pecking up, down, left, and right on a traditional keyboard layout.
Google Japan keyboard page also suggests that you can use it with a QWERTY or ASCII code layout.
Many detailed use cases for this one-row keyboard are clearly jokes, from using it to measure your child’s height and dropping objects behind the couch, to using it as a cane, to using it as a walking stick, or the “error correction module” aka net. that turns the keyboard into an error detector in case you encounter errors while coding (get it?).
But one supposed benefit we could actually get behind is the amount of personal space the keyboard naturally imposes in the office and beyond:
Google Japan’s wacky keyboard concepts have been around for years as a way to promote Google’s Gboard. keyboard app. Past iterations have included the Gboard teacup version Y Gboard spoon bending version.
