First ten V5 prototypes shipped!

Like every week, there’s been multiple issues but we can proudly say… we’ve shipped the first ten Shortcut V5s! Woohoo!

This past 7 days have been really interesting. We’ve met with ergonomic experts, started working with online communication experts and we tested a brand new V5 playing League of Legends.

At the beginning of the week we had a meeting with two ergonomic experts that have 15+ years of industry experience. They reviewed the Shortcut, found it really interested and gave us advice on how to improve it and move forward in regards to the ergonomic certificate.

One of the things they told us is that the wadding we were using for the wrist rests deteriorates really quickly and probably they could help us find high quality foam. Luckily, they manufacture memory foam mattresses and pillows and 48h after our conversation we had 100 memory foam wrist rests. The timing couldn't have been better!

During the week we had some testers come and make some ergonomy tests and one of them played a few games with the Shortcut. The impressions were good and we got this awesome shot that was very welcomed by our Twitter followers:

An extra shots from behind the scenes:

Since we announced the Shortcut in January, I felt that because of lack of time and expertise on my side, our communication in social media was lacking.

Recently we started working with social media experts and they are coaching me while setting up the structure, increasing our reach communication quality. We hope you notice a positive change and as always, feedback is welcomed!

As said at the beginning of the blog posts, this week we’ve had issues too. And of course, those issues were assembling the prototypes.

After nearly two weeks waiting, on Tuesday the Gateron switches arrived.

Finally we would assemble and ship prototypes! Or that’s what we naively thought.

For the second time in few weeks, we made a huge estimation error. We tried assembling ten V5s during the week and we ended finishing none. By Friday we had one at 99%, four at 90% and 80%.

This made me rethink how we were working and why we were not delivering on time. On Saturday we started working in a different way, rearranging all assembled components in a visual way and focusing on finishing the immediate next one. By the end of Sunday we were already half way through the second batch of ten keyboards.

Monday was the big day. We had to ship the 10 keyboards but I did some last minute change to the packaging and had to do the final validation. This time, we delivered!

The first 10 V5s have been shipped to Spain, Sweden, Germany, UK, Canada and USA. We are extremely excited to have testers all over the globe and we hope that they can really feel the amount of work we’ve put in developing the V5s.

Of course the V5s aren’t final products, we have many limitations. They are built from methacrylate, 3D printed PLA and off the shelf components, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t paid attention to details and tried to create the best possible user experience.

As for our next steps, I don’t want to say an exact number but we will focus on manufacturing as many V5s as we can.

During the week we should be able to set up the forum too, so all the closed beta testers can hang together with their brand new keyboards :D

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