Logitech Desktop Wave User Manual

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Creating Comfort:

The Making of the Logitech Comfort Wave Design

The story behind Logitech’s breakthrough keyboard design

eyboards. Around the world, we find these thin, rectangular objects in nearly

every home and office. For many of us, typing is so ingrained in our daily lives
that we don’t even think about doing it. Like driving, we do it automatically. But
think of the role keyboards play in our lives. Consider for a moment just how many ways
we use them. E-mails. Proposals. Spreadsheets. Instant messages. Web searches.
Browsing the Internet. Video games. In fact, according to a recent study at Harvard, for
Logitech, the average person types more than 2 million keystrokes every year. That’s
equal to five forty-hour weeks of sitting in a typing position.

While the rest of the world takes these input devices for granted, Logitech’s Switzerland­based keyboard development team has dedicated endless hours – even years – to
improving and reinventing keyboard design and features to provide the most comfortable
typing and best computing experience possible.

A Tradition of Innovation

When Logitech entered the keyboard market in 1998, the company had already
established itself as a leader in mouse innovation. And it quickly demonstrated that it
could deliver innovative keyboards as well, beginning with its creation of a mouse-and­keyboard bundle, which Logitech sells under the Desktop® trademark.. Today, many
other companies sell keyboard-and-mouse combinations and they even have a
dedicated section in the keyboard aisle.

Since entering the keyboard market, Logitech has steadily challenged the accepted
function and design of keyboards. In 2003, Logitech introduced new comfort features:
Zero Degree Tilt™ to address wrist extension, two-handed navigation to distribute work
more evenly between the right and left hands, and a redesigned 5-pack (the Home,
Delete, End, Page Up and Page Down keys) to minimize the distance traveled from
keyboard to mouse.

In 2004, in response to the computer’s increasing visibility in the home, the company
announced the highly designed Logitech® diNovo™ Media Desktop™. The recipient of
numerous design and technology awards, the keyboard incorporated sleek design with
advanced technology, such as a redesigned key mechanism, Bluetooth connectivity and
a separate MediaPad™ for controlling media on the computer. People who purchased
the diNovo desktop no longer had to hide their computer in a home office – instead, they
could proudly display it in common living areas.

Having worked since early 2005 on updating the diNovo design, in 2006, Logitech
announced the diNovo Edge™ keyboard, a significant evolution of the diNovo Media
Desktop. Another result of the Logitech Desktop team’s successful collaboration, the

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diNovo Edge keyboard set a new standard in keyboard style due to its ultra-thin,
minimalist design, rechargeability and dynamic backlighted keys.

Looking Ahead

Over the years, many different types of keyboard designs have been explored. One of
the most common alternatives to the straight keyboard is the split, or ergonomic,
keyboard. (Logitech and other manufacturers have manufactured ergonomic keyboards
for more than 10 years.) However, ergonomic keyboards have never attracted more than
a small portion of people; most people are discouraged by the strange shape; for many
people, these designs require that they relearn how to type. However, scientific studies
have confirmed that split keyboards reduce forearm pronation because they allow
people’s arms to take a more natural position when they type.

With the bulk of the diNovo Edge keyboard development efforts behind them, in the
summer of 2005, Logitech’s desktop development team turned their attention to an
emerging, unmet need. The team realized that although people were spending more
time on their computers than ever before, unlike many other frequently used products,
the shape and comfort of mainstream keyboards hadn’t really changed or evolved in
response.

What could Logitech do for the millions of people laboring at their computers with tired
hands or wrists for hours on end each day, for the people who wanted more comfort but
didn’t want to relearn how to type?

They set out to develop a keyboard that would deliver comfort and usability in an
approachable design. With this goal in place, Logitech Ergonomic and Usability Expert
Sylvain Sauvage began researching basic ergonomic principles to apply to the new
keyboard design.

Addressing the Four Points of Discomfort

To begin, Sauvage reviewed the available ergonomic research and established that
Logitech’s new keyboard design must address the discomfort that can arise from the
traditional, straight keyboard. The following four points of discomfort established the
underlying criteria that would drive the development of the Comfort Wave Design:

1. Pronation: Straight keyboards require people to rotate their arms (pronation) to
position their hands parallel to the desktop. A comfortable keyboard should
reduce arm rotation.

2. Finger Static Load: Straight keyboards are designed as if human fingers are all
the same length. A comfortable keyboard should allow fingers to rest in a natural
position.

3. Wrist Ulnar Deviation: Straight keyboards cause the wrists to bend unnaturally
(wrist ulnar deviation). A comfortable keyboard key frame should curve to reduce
wrist ulnar deviation.

4. Wrist Extension: Straight keyboards often take an angled profile, forcing wrists to
flex (wrist extension). The key frame on a more comfortable keyboard ought to
remain parallel to the desktop, instead of at an incline, to eliminate the need to
flex the hands at the wrist.

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The Actual Shape of the Human Hand

With the four points of discomfort in mind, Sauvage
began examining the human hand and its natural
resting position. He noticed that when we place our
hands on a straight keyboard, our hands actually take
the shape the keyboard guides them into. Sauvage
began to think about the basic concepts behind
designing a keyboard for the natural shape and resting
position of the hands.

One of the defining moments came when Sauvage was

Figure 1 Pin art

playing with a pin-art toy, which uses metal pins to
capture the three-dimensional shape of any object placed against it. Sauvage pressed
his hand onto the pin-art toy and saw the outline of his hand. And he realized what had
always been apparent but never explored and commercialized in keyboard design: each
of our fingers is a different length. Logitech could create a more comfortable keyboard by
shaping the key frame to fit the variable vertical length of the fingers, by offering a key
frame that mirrored the actual shape of the human hand.

From that moment, Sauvage began to feel confident about an innovative design – a
wave-shaped key frame that would mirror the actual varying length of the fingers. A
keyboard design with the potential to bring comfort to the masses.

The Specifications of Comfort

To determine the specific variations in height of each key, from late September 2005
until March 2006, Sauvage worked with a team of industrial engineers at a U.S.
university. Using design analysis and prototype testing, Sauvage was able to determine
the ideal contour for what would become the signature element of the Logitech Comfort
Wave Design.

He began by creating three-dimensional renderings that mapped a wave-shaped key
frame onto an image of an existing keyboard – the Logitech® Cordless Desktop® MX™

5000. They created drawings of each keyboard row and reviewed several options with
various heights for each key. Finally, they created four prototypes and analyzed the
perceived comfort of each design.

After testing and reviewing the results, Sauvage arrived at a critical decision,
establishing that the ideal height differential between the lowest and highest key should
be 4 mm. A smaller height – 2 mm or 3 mm – was too subtle. A higher one – 5 mm –
was too drastic. Finding the right balance between what usability experts call the
perceived and actual comfort would prove to be a critical decision. The peaks and
troughs of the Wave key frame would rise and fall but never exceed a height differential
of more than 4 mm.

But the new keyboard would need to offer more than just an innovative key frame. To
achieve Logitech’s goal of providing a comfort keyboard for everyone, Sauvage knew