duckyPad
By Andrew Gregory. Posted
The standard keyboard, as it exists on most devices, is a slow, archaic thing. The QWERTY layout wasn’t invented with speed or ease of typing in mind, but to ensure that the most frequently used keys were far apart in order to reduce the risk of jammed typewriter mechanisms. Once that became entrenched, computers were forever hampered. Useful features such as special characters and actions such as copy, paste, zoom, etc., are treated like add-ons, often accessed by contorting the hands to press two or three keys at once, twisting our precious carpal bones until they ache.
Into this workflow and anatomical mess comes the duckyPad. You can buy this from its creator, dekuNukem, in a complete form or as a bare-bones assembly to which you add your own keys, allowing the user to customise the keys’ exact amount of clickyness. Even better than this, the device incorporates an OLED screen showing what each key does, so if you forget, you won’t have to go diving into configuration files to find out. Oh, and did we mention it looks lovely?
