At Hakkei, our corporate philosophy is to focus on three key metrics whenever we design a new interface: Accessibility, utility, and efficiency.
But there’s a somewhat shorter and simpler way to express exactly what it is that we value: Your time.
And not just your time, but the time of everyone your work with, play with, and depend upon.WebHID exists, at least as far as we’re concerned, to allow people to better leverage their time.In this article, we’ll explain how we’ve been working to accomplish that very goal.
Macros, shortcuts, and customizations. All of these things are programmable via the Hakkei configurator. The reasoning is simple: Spend your time once to get things set up properly, so that you can save time later.
Let’s say that it takes half an hour to remap, test out, and tweak part of the configuration of your Hakkei keyboard via the online WebHID configurator. You create a macro that you use twice every work day, around 42 weeks a year.
So 420 times every year, you press that macro button. A process that once took you about 12seconds to complete now happens in just under 3 seconds, as invisible hands strike the exact key combinations with lightning speed and perfect efficiency.
You spent 30 minutes creating something that, over the course of the first year alone, saved you around 63 minutes. That one time investment of time already paid for itself twice over.
Now, let’s say that you’re just one person in this particular role. A total of a dozen people in your company or in your circle of friends could make use of this exact same macro. Suddenly your 30 minute investment saved that collective 756 minutes, or around twelve and a half hours, in thefirst year alone.
Imagine applying this sort of time savings to an entire help desk of thousands. Or an open source development project with hundreds of contributors. Or an emergency services switchboard where every second counts.
This magnification of a one time effort, over months or years, spread across a wider pool of users, is what we’re talking about when we examine the value of time.
All of the above scenarios are possible with just a basic import / export function on a WebHID configurator. The new shortcuts, the macros, the keyboard or other interface device remapping all of that can be stored in the product’s firmware, ready to be exported and shared as needed.
But the future of the Hakkei WebHID configurator will allow any user to benefit from the time investment of another.
As an opt-in service, we plan to create a way to publicly share a configuration that you’re proud of with the world. Similarly, you’ll be able to search for interesting time saving macros, shortcuts, and device remapping schemes. Communities of people with similar interests can be formed, and the products of their macro and shortcut development can be shared.
In this way, the efforts of someone halfway around the world could save you a ton of time. Or perhaps your creation could save thousands of people just a little bit of their own precious time.Countless professions can benefit: Video editors, programmers, accountants, support specialists, streamers, bloggers, teachers... anyone who finds themselves doing the same processes or functions over and over again.
If you create and share something that saves a million people just one hour of their time, you’ve created over 114 years of freedom. You’ve saved an entire lifetime.
But of course, it isn’t just about the raw mathematics of time savings. Hakkei is also focused on how we live our lives, keeping in mind health and ergonomics, accessibility and happiness.
The right macros and shortcuts can allow someone with only one hand to flourish at their job. Orto create an artistic masterpiece. Or to summon and present a compelling story. Yes there’s a time savings element involved, but there’s also a pure enabling aspect to macros that simplify the complex.
Then there’s the ergonomic factors. Preventing repetitive strain and making difficult button combinations easier are both functions of Hakkei’s WebHID. When combined with our hardware design, which puts user health and comfort first, we hope to improve the quality of the time that is spent using our products.
Time saved by intelligent configuration, as well as time enhanced by good design, is the true measure of how well our WebHID configurator is doing its job.
Applying the power of the Hakkei WebHID configurator to a standard piece of hardware would be quite a powerful prospect. But applying it to hardware with specialized features creates a whole new realm of opportunity.
Take, for example, the clickable rotary encoder that is present on the core Hakkei keyboard.Custom configurations for such a device could be a game changer. Properly defined in the configurator, the dialling aspect of the encoder might be used to fine tune CB radio frequencies.Or it might control the swing of an IP security camera, with the ‘click’ feature capturing a high resolution screenshot. It could remotely mirror the functions of an Arduino controlled Internet ofThings device.
Every ‘click’ of the rotary encoder could toggle between an incremental mode and an absolute mode. So the encoder could be used to, for example, control a gear motor. In incremental mode, the RPMs could be finely controlled with the twist of the dial. In absolute mode, each twist could upshift or downshift to fixed, predetermined motor output levels.
WebHID configurators can do more than simple key and button definitions seen in most keyboard and mouse software. They can define inputs and outputs at a discrete level, allowing for the full remapping of all available resources.
Hakkei strives to increase both the quantity of time available to you, as well as the quality of time that you spend with one of our products. It’s our hope that every effort that you put into customizing your hardware is magnified, so that it becomes a good investment of your precious time.
Coming Soon
