How a keyboard is made - Planning (PART 1/2)

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sixty
Gasbag Guru

15 Feb 2011, 01:21

This is the rough (bear with me!) translation of an article printed in the April 2003 issue of "PC Welt", taking a look at the planning and production of a Cherry keyboard.

This post is the first of two, focusing mainly on the planning stages. It gets more interesting in part two, which explains production as well as testing and other stuff around the actual production. I will probably post that tomorrow or so.

Of course this is kinda outdated by now, but its unlikely that much in the stages of production actually changed within these 7 years that passed.

How a Keyboard is made

Computer keyboards obviously have always been one of the most important parts on a computing setup. Not always are they treated with the respect they deserve. Often boiled with steaming, hot coffee or splattered with ice-cold soft drinks. PC-WELT wanted to find out more on how this indispensable computer-accessory is being made. We visited the experts at Cherry in Auerbach, Germany and took a peek over their shoulders onto the production lines of the new CyMotion series.

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The production floors are shining clean in a sterile white color. There is no dust to be seen anywhere. Between the assembly lines, a few indoor plants remind us of polished office rooms. But it actually is a real factory, through which Heribert Hammerl will tour us. Hammerl has been with Cherry in Auerbach since over 26 years. He is the head of the keyboard production section.

A few kilometers to the east, US-Army tanks are ripping apart the scenery. Auerbach is located right next to the biggest military training area in Europe.

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The assembly lines in the Cherry main building are running 5 to 7 days a week, spitting out new keyboards nonstop. During the holiday season, the demand for keyboards is at the highest peak, causing the production lines to run 24/7. During the summer, demand is much lower and the assembly lines lay still on weekends.

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The keyboard production spits out about three keyboards per minute on each of the eight assembly lines, running for 24 hours every day. Production times vary a lot from model to model. Most standard keyboards take about 20 seconds to be fully assembled, resulting in 18,000 to 20,000 produced keyboards every day. Before the first keyboards leave the production lines, everything has already been planned and thought of several years in advance.

Three Years of Planning

To give you an example, lets take a look at the CyMotion line of keyboards. With this newly developed keyboard, Cherry is aiming to compete with Logitech - the dominating player in the consumer keyboard market. As a keyboard aimed for release in October 2003, the CyMotion has already been in planning stages since early 2000.

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What does the perfect consumer keyboard look like? What does the average customer care for? What is the highest plausible price? So many questions. All of these needed to be solved between the planning of the first concepts in early 2000 until the introduction to the mass market in October 2003. Cherry had users take several surveys and outsourced further research to according market research institutes.

Find a target audience and define the competition

The consumer market for PC keyboards is a fiercely fought over battlefield. Logitech is the undisputed market leader, dominating the consumer market. Microsoft recently also took further steps to expand into this market. Out of all the possible target-audiences, Cherry has decided to leave their business-oriented path and attempt to also target the consumer market. But how can they be different from the competing brands? What is the difference between their keyboards and the existing ones from their competition? What type of market are they actually targeting here?

Apart the big players in the business, there is also the market for much cheaper budget keyboards. But this is not Cherry’s target. Cherry is aiming for Logitech directly.

Innovation is needed

Cherry is actually not new to the consumer keyboard market, but they did not yet have any notable success here. Cherry keyboards are nowhere to be found in the usual retail outlets. To change this, their new generation consumer keyboard will need to be different and innovative.

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One of these new innovative features, found on the CyMotion line, are the extra “XPress” keys. An additional set of function keys, giving the user access to frequently used options. What exactly these extra function keys do, has been decided based around data gathered from the users directly. Cherry has written a dedicated tool just for this purpose. The MSDB (Marketing Studies Data Base) tool has been used to record over 200 million keystrokes from over 700 users over a period of two months. The software analyzed the most commonly used key combinations and “key-chords”, with the goal of simplifying tedious tasks. For example a dedicated function key now gives access to all commonly required copy-paste functions such as Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V and Ctrl+X.

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Another innovative feature is the solar cell. The “Master Solar” from the new CyMotion line, will be the very first keyboard powered entirely by solar power. Of course, Cherry is no expert for the production of solar cells, so the keyboard has been developed in cooperation with one of the leaders in solar technology.

Software Development

It is not only the hardware that is important for the success of a consumer keyboard, but also the software that is delivered with it. Cherry decided to use their in-house tool “ Keym@n”, which allows for easy customization with a very powerful back end. The software has been developed only for Windows, but Cherry is committed to having all their keyboards work under other operating systems as a “normal keyboard”, following the IBM-Standards.

Not everything that seems useful to a user might be make sense from an economic point of view. When developing a keyboard for the consumer mass market, you always have to keep the retail-price in mind. Cherry is using their competition Logitech and Microsoft as a rough base for product pricing.

Reveal Everything?

Around the year 2000, Cherry first started thinking about expanding to the consumer market. Besides the market research and the development, they also had to pay attention to norms and standards. To sell in Europe, a keyboard of course has to be CE and GS certified, while keeping all DIN standards.

The first goal for Cherry was to receive the Microsoft WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) seal and the resulting license to use the Windows Logo, which verifies that Microsoft has certified the hardware to be fully compatible with Windows. The lack of the seal, of course does not indicate that the keyboard would not work under Windows, but surprisingly, this is a very helping factor in consumer market sales.

To receive the WHQL-Seal, Cherry has to reveal their entire product information and production data to Microsoft. A pretty painful task, considering Microsoft is one of the biggest competing players in the market for consumer keyboards.

Analyze the competition

There are not only Cherry keyboards to be found on the desk of a Cherry employee. In fact there are several different keyboards on Matthias Lochner’s desk. We notice a Logitech keyboard, which really seems to distance itself from the inhouse branded products, with its bright white and green packaging.

Not everything the competition makes has to be bad and you do not always have to re-invent the wheel. It seems natural to take a peek at what the competition is doing. That is exactly why Cherry employees buy all competing keyboards and mice and test them for strengths and weaknesses.

Time for some color

Of course, the most important part of a keyboard should be its function, but the design also plays an important role. The design and color of a keyboard is a very important factor for success. The designers giving shape to the new line of Cherry keyboards, often are the same people behind designs on for Audi, BMW and Daimler-Chrysler.

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But its not only the design that gets influenced by car parts. After all, Cherry has been a big supplier to the car industry for years. In fact, many engineers who are now working on keyboards, have been working on car parts when they first joineid Cherry.

Designers at work

Its not only about looking good - its also about being unique. The customer should recognize a Cherry keyboard instantly and should be able to tell it apart from the competing Logitech products at first sight.

Cherry has a dedicated designer, outside the company coming up with ideas and drafts in the shape of CAD files. It is then up to the Cherry engineers to realize these ideas into an actual product. Unsurprisingly, this does not always work out as planned. Frequent communication between the engineering-team and the designer result in dozens of drafts and prototypes with tons of changes for every new keyboard.

Converting Bits to actual shapes

After the digital drafts from the designer, the first mock-ups will be made. These mock-ups are rough prototypes, resulting from the first few molds. A prototype mock-up like this, has no actual function and does not work as a keyboard. In fact, not a single key can even be pressed and no scroll wheel can be moved. The purpose of these prototypes are to simply have something to look at, outside the computer screen. It is a mockup like this, that is used to discuss and tweak a design. Precision is very important here. Sometimes a few millimeters make gigantic differences in terms of usability and ergonomics.

The first mock-up of the CyMotion line was done in early 2003. The conceptual planning for the design alone therefore took almost three years.

Time to press the keys for the first time

Once the design is set, its time to find out if it actually is going to work out both economically and functional. A feasibility analysis delivers a first result. If the result on a design concept is positive, work moves on to what actually happens inside the plastic shell.

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More CAD drawings of PCBs and switches are being made and more prototypes are being built. The working prototypes are now being used by Cherry employees in their actual everyday work setups. But its not only typing - employees also purposely spill drinks and liquids into their keyboards. The results of these tests are then used to further refine and improve the designs, resulting in another batch of prototypes.

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Most of the tools and machines used in the production of these prototypes and samples are also developed by Cherry directly.

ripster

15 Feb 2011, 01:40

Thanks for the translation. Interesting read.

But in their fight against Logitech for World Domination something happened when they hit US Shores.
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User avatar
mass

15 Feb 2011, 03:22

Nice article, can't wait for the second part.
Cheers.

User avatar
Crazy9000

15 Feb 2011, 03:45

I think the production is more interesting, will be looking forward to that.

ripster

15 Feb 2011, 06:48

The part where they introduce the Linux version of the Cymotion should be interesting. Another big winner on American shores.

Changed my life seeing this
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User avatar
bugfix

15 Feb 2011, 09:45

Very interesting, thank you! Although I hope you don't usually read PC Welt...

User avatar
sixty
Gasbag Guru

15 Feb 2011, 15:49

bugfix wrote:Very interesting, thank you! Although I hope you don't usually read PC Welt...
Just for this article. I'm actually hunting down a few old magazines in hopes for good articles. There are a few interesting ones about the G80-5000 I still wanna find.

User avatar
Moogle Stiltzkin

18 Feb 2011, 16:38

Speaking of keyboard design, this must be the most efficient one yet :mrgreen:

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Apparently it took the geniuses only 10 seconds to design it based on the global internet trend roflcakes :mrgreen:

User avatar
sixty
Gasbag Guru

02 Mar 2011, 18:24

Korean translation for part 1 is now available, thanks Uranium~

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