Make Mine Möbius

As both a long-ago math major and someone with an overdeveloped sense of whimsey, I’ve long been fascinated by Möbius strips. You know Möbius strips: they look like they should be two sided, but they are actually one sided (as you can test by tracing a line all the way around without lifting your pencil). They’re simple to make, but deceptively complex (mathematicians would add that it is a non-orientable surface with no boundaries, but let’s not go there).

The Gboard double-sided keyboard. Credit: Google Japan

You probably never found yourself thinking, hmm, I wish I had a keyboard that was a Möbius strip, but the good folks at Google Japan thought some of us wished we had a keyboard that we could type on both sides of. So, voila: they invented a Möbius strip keyboard.

"'I want to use the back of the keyboard as well as the front!'," Google Japan writes, in one translation, of the problem it aimed to solve. "In response to the voice of such users, I made a keyboard that has no front or back. A unique keyboard with two sides. Gboard double-sided version."

“If you turn the keyboard upside down, you can’t type at all. After racking our brains trying to find a solution to this major problem, we came up with this keyboard,” Google Japan noted in another translation of the blog post.

They call it the Gboard double-sided, aka the “Infinity Keyboard.” (I’m kind of disappointed they call a Möbius strip “double-sided,” but I’ll blame the marketing people, not the product people).

"The endless structure has no front or back," Google Japan claims of its design. "You can type at any angle. If you put the Gboard double-sided version [somewhere], suddenly a circle of people will form there. If we used it together, smooth 'teamringWorkin.' You'll come up with some original ideas.” 

One can certainly hope so.

Now, that's teamwork. Credit: Google Japan

The Infinity Keyboard has some 208 mechanical keys, able to be accessed at any angle and from both “sides.” They are laid out in ortho-linear 26x8 layout, with per key RBG lighting (ergo, using as a Christmas wreath is one application the developers mention). The keys are hot-swappable, allowing users to easily customize the array. With all those keys, users can have keys specifically for typing, gaming, and coding, as well as in other languages. Sadly, it isn’t wireless, using a USB-C connection.  

Google Japan estimates it weighs “20.8 donuts,” which Fast Company figures is about 2.2 pounds (based on the weight of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed).  

Google Japan shows a number of uses for the keyboard, including simultaneous use by several people but also to wear as a bracelet or as the aforementioned Christmas wreath. And, they point out, it would be great in weightless conditions, since it has no top or bottom.

It turns out that Google Japan has been releasing unique keyboard designs each year on October 1, because – I had never counted -- 10/1 = 101 = number of keys on a typical keyboard.  Previous efforts include the Gboard Bar, which has all the keys laid out horizontally (some 5 feet long!), the Gboard Bending Spoon, which allows users to input by – you guessed it – bending a spoon, and Gboard Caps, a wearable keyboard in the (rough) shape of a cap.

Although each of these keyboards exist and are functional, Google has no plans to commercialize them. They’re intended to engender some smiles, and, perhaps, spur some creative thinking. However, Google has made the schematics and firmware open source on GitHub, with 3D printing STL files. You can make one yourself and see what it can do for your creativity/productivity.

Have at it. Credit: Google Japan

Or, if you’re not that technically oriented, they have a PDF that lets you make a paper version just to get a sense of it.  

Marcus Mears III, reviewing the Infinity Keyboard in TechRadar, says: “I love seeing these bizarre keyboard designs pop up…It's this type of ingenuity and playful creation that we need to keep advancing in the world of computer peripherals - where would we be if we never moved on from trackballs and beige membrane keyboards? Certainly not at the Gboard Double-Sided Version.” 

Jesus Diaz, in Fast Company, goes further in his praise: “If anything, this ongoing keyboard joke shows that there’s nobody in the world like the Japanese to create the quirkiest, most fun designs on the planet.” He adds: “Nobody else can compete with their imagination, but here I humbly submit, Google Japan, two final words for the next Gboard: hula hoop.”

I look forward to seeing what they come up with next October.

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We live in a world that, for the most part, has never advanced from the QWERTY keyboard design, which, as you may recall, was originally intended to slow typists down so they wouldn’t jam the typewriter keys. Obviously, it’s been a long time since that’s been our big problem, yet we’ve gotten so used to that layout that we’re still using it. So if it takes a double sided, Infinity keyboard, Möbius strip keyboard to jar our thinking about keyboards (or anything else), I say: good work, Google Japan!

Much as I love the concept, I have to admit that I’ll probably never use a Gboard double sided keyboard, and I’m certainly not going to attempt to build one. But I love that the design team at Google Japan thought of it, and I hope others are inspired to build their own, to play around with it, and to see what new ideas it might spark.

I’ve written before about people trying to break traditional design paradigms – e.g., umbrellas or even the wheel. We get so used to doing things in a particular way using existing designs that we often don’t remember that, hey, other designs are possible, and some of those designs may open up not only new ways of doing the things we’re doing but also help us identify new things to do. Design should be an enabler, not a constraint.

Their video talks about wanting “a keyboard with a twist, one that turns the problem space outside-in.” That’s what design should be helping us do.