KardBoard Kit
An inclusice gaming keyboard kit.
November, 2020
KardBoard Kit is a self-tuning, modifiable cardboard keyboard.
It is a kit that contains a variety of components:
We have multiple boards in our product with various cap sizes. By using cardboard and sections such as switches and adapters, we aim to make it cheaper and modifiable for different individual requirements to assemble our product.It also has joysticks that meets disabilities.
For players with reduced limb capabilities, the KardBoard Kit helps to build an adjustable keyboard to enrich their enjoyment in gaming and is built to be inclusive.
Our Purpose:
- KardBoard Kit aims at creating a keyboard that could adapt to limb disabled gamers’ needs. Instead of painfully adapting yourself to the static keyboard, we offer a flexible solution to your unique demand.
- KardBoard Kit wants to improve your gaming experiences.
- KardBoard Kit is designed to be inclusive. With its low cost and flexibility, it is aimed to include low income groups, limb disabled groups, and even all the casual gamers.
- With the carboard, KardBoard Kit is also aimed to be sustainable and environmental friendly.
Now, let several rendering with callouts tell the story:
An user interface is also created together with KardBoard Kit’s physical items:
- Menu View:
- Click on ‘Map your keys!” and you will navigate to this page, showing the current keyboards you have (Yes, we could have multiple boards):
- Click on one of the keyboards, you will enter the scene of maping specific keys:
The rounded-edge squares indicates the unmapped keys, and the yellow color represents the adapters we have in our product that connects with user’s own sensors and interfaces.
- Click on each key, you will enter the view to map your keys:
which, you will find all the keys on the keyboard here, as well as some shortcut keys. In custom your own functions, you could have controller keys mapped to your keyboard, as well as other simple shortcuts like volume up/down and lock your computer and much more.
- Mapped keys will be in a different color to show its status, in this case, key “Q” is highlighted:
- A demonstration after mapping most of the keys:
You can see that different colors indicates different functions: green for letter keys, purple for number keys, blue for function keys, and orange for mapped adapter keys. The reset button on the top right could also help you reset the keys immediately.
The user interface is done using figma, and the link to the prototype demo is here
Where did this project come from & where would it go?
The goal of this project is to create something inclusive for the video game industry. Not a good strategy though, we first think about the product/solution before settling on a problem to solve:
The original two ideas are as the following, which I draw inspiration from Google Cardboard & Nintendo Labo, and also the distributed computation power concept from Folding@home (it’s kind of similar to Golem in the idea).
The Problem we identify:
Current keyboard has an awkward layout design which is not comfortable for people with limb disabilities to play games, or even common gamers. It is also extremely expensive.
The challenges that remain and are now being discussed are that it is targeted at minors with hand difficulties and how to make the keyboard more adaptive to them, with the reduction of price being considered.
After the creation of the KardBoard Kit. We would still like to make adjustments:
- For the cardboard base, I put it in the slides that: the carboard are designed to simplify the construction of key caps, but future design will continue to simplify this process.
- In our Vision, we would like to make the first round launch by cooperating with disability agencies and schools to enlarge our customers. After that, according to the feedbacks, decide whether to change the product flow to: First send customer the cardboard for trial and adjustment, then we retreive the model for 3d-printing the actual product.
- We also would like to design different tiers of the product to meet different groups of the customers, as we put in our Business Model. RGB lights, plastic/metal key caps, different type of key switches will all be included.
Why do we care?
PC gaming now has approximately 1.3 billion players worldwide.
With the usage of a keyboard a still trend for PC gaming, gamers’ demands on keyboard are ever rising.
Moreover, with various campaigns calling for equity of different groups, it is the time to design something truly inclusive. Something innovative.
For our KardBoard Kit, it is actually quite an exciting product because there are no such things on the market currently. Even not for disabled gamers, it looks exciting to offer the possibility of creating your own customized keyboards, without any limitations, especially when there are so many people crazy of keyboards and different key switches.
Video:
We put much information into the Pitch slides, but only extracted the essence in our presentation.
By only listening to our voices and the subtitles, you should get a clear idea of what we are making. But if you are interested in more details, please feel free to pause by each slides and see what we’ve came up with! Apologize for the rush in this video!