Research & development history of USB EkaPad
From a two hand mobile concept to an ergonomic, single handed powerful keyboard
Time Line
(click on a headline date to see detailed page)
History
Documents
(click to see the document as a pdf)
2001 The year was spent working on business plans, contacting potential investors and talking to many potential team members.
Research was conducted on letter frequencies. Many keypad shapes and configurations were considered.
We found we needed a new name. One that didn't imply music and was innovative, techie and with a unique urL: EkaTetra.
Documents, pdfs, can be accessed by clicking on them. Many of the documents were actual working documents and have been selected to demonstrate some of the activity which is required to develop a sound and bug free product.
2002 This year was very active. Much time was spent contacting potential investors. Development began to firm up our keypad design concepts. Much market research was done into the market for portable and mobile hand held devices like PDAs and keyboards, to see how EkaTetra could best serve the market.
2003 January February The speed of development definitely picked up during this year. The keypad concept firmed up sufficiently for models to be made and finger placement tested. Software development was started.
2003 March June Producing final icons to represent EkaPad chords, starting Learning materials, engineering Open&Shut Case, selecting PDA for beta test project kept us busy. We settled on the chords to be used with characters and commands.
2003 July December Building the first prototype EkaPads, writing EkaPad software, writing PDA driver, producing Open&Shut Case, designing and printing Learning materials, getting volunteers for Beta Test, and starting Beta Test project.
2004 - 2005 In early 2004 we completed beta test: the significant results were chording/character selections worked well, educational materials needed only minimal tweeking, software was adequate, BUT users could not keep their fingers located on the keys. Touch typing was a challenge. We built 22 iterations before we had the current design. We finally found the EkaHand solution for holding the EkaPad, after many, many trials and experiments.
We now had a tested working unit. We had validated the concept. So much of 2004 - 2005 was spent seeking investors. No luck.
2006 With very minimal money, the team decided to go for it!
We decided to build a USB EkaPad, forgo the PDA market. We created final production designs.and worked to find suppliers. This also required new software and a better understanding of how people (in general, not anecdotally) used keyboards in both Windows and Mac environments.
2007 January June We ordered production tooling, checked parts, developed software/hardware for installing EkaPad software
We utilized some of our technology into making the Ultimate Gadget Mount and selling these.
2007 July December We investigated our concept of the IMP - instant messaging phone - a combination of the EkaPad keypad with a phone and display.
Money was short, so we had to hold up on production.
2008 - 2009 We finally got into production of the EkaPad and began selling version 1.1 in September 2008. There were still minor problems with the software; these were all solved by a major brainwave requiring rewrite. But all the problems were solved. We also started our web site during this time. We went to HCII human interaction conference of world wide researchers.
