Do stale bits of toast rain down from your keyboard when you turn it over? Have years of sticky soda spills given some keys a mind of their ownnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn?
For those us who eat lunch at our desks, Logitech has introduced a washable keyboard. When crumbs pile up, you can just wipe it with soapy water or even rinse it underneath a faucet. It repels dust and can be submerged in up to 11 inches of water. Holes underneath the keyboard allow liquids (like coffee) to drain and help it dry out.
A washable keyboard might not be the first innovation that would occur to the average electronics engineer. But when do you, the user, actually give your keyboard a second thought? When you spill something on it, certainly. Or when your desk dining habits finally render it so useless that you must discard your keyboard and adjust to the subtle differences of your new one.
As we’ve noted before, Logitech uses Net Promoter scores and customer feedback to guide its design decisions. And one important result of Net Promoter systems is that near real-time feedback from customers regularly provides a far more accurate picture than traditional surveys of what customers actually want. In The Ultimate Question 2.0, Fred and Rob discuss how low Net Promoter scores exposed design flaws in Logitech’s MX 5000 keyboard and mouse. Logitech listened to customers’ criticisms and improved its next model, helping the company to earn a higher Net Promoter score than the original.
Now, with the washable keyboard, it appears that Logitech has found a way to address a very different flaw: our sloppy desk lives.
