Finding the key to success can prove elusive

Nuala Macklin's revolutionary new keyboard design has impressed the experts but now she needs a business angel and commercial partner, writes Karlin Lillington.

If sheer determination coupled with an innovative and highly praised product design and prototype could guarantee success, Nuala Macklin would be overseeing an empire of ergonomic keyboards.

Instead, the Dublin inventor of an extraordinary keyboard cannot get it over the last hurdle and into production. This is despite excellent reviews and feedback from experts at the University of California at Berkeley, Logitech, Dell, Intel and Microsoft, and the backing of Enterpise Ireland, entrepreneurial programmes at DCU's Invent centre and UCD's Nova centre.

"I don't need goodwill now. I need a business angel and I need a commercial partner," says the resolute writer and entrepreneur who, following a painful mugging several years ago, came up with the concept of a divided keyboard that could be used while upright, lying down, with one hand, or while walking.

Macklin had to type a dissertation despite injuries that forced her to lie on her back with her elbows propped on pillows. "I would have given £5,000 [ €7,300] for a keyboard that could be used lying down," she says.

Instead, she proceeded slowly on a conventional keyboard and put her mind to work fashioning the ideal keyboard and concept drawings.

Push her as to why, and she admits she always was thinking up ways of doing things differently even as a child - a method of turning off a light switch from across a room, for example, and other gizmos and gadgets.

Her determination with the keyboard has been epic, taking her to Taiwan, Texas, Seattle, San Francisco, Geneva, Brasilia, England, Scotland, Wales, Denmark and elsewhere.

First, she set to work creating a prototype by cutting a conventional keyboard in two. The result - three incarnations later - is a keyboard in two halves, with a half sitting on either side of a chair just below waist height. The keyboardist sits fully back in the chair, which means the spine is correctly aligned and the head is back, not leaning forward forcing the neck to carry the head's five pound plus weight. Arms extend down to each keyboard and relax comfortably, with palm and wrist gently supported by gel rests.

Each board has a slight curve. A touch typist adapts very quickly to the design, she says.

"There's also a version you can wear while standing, or hold on your lap, or use while lying down, for example, if you are paraplegic, injured or are simply more comfortable that way.

"There's even a dual function keyboard that lets you type if you are one-armed. This is not only perfect for preventing musculoskeletal disorders, but can be used easily by the disabled and by children. It has marine, aeronautical, military and industrial applications, basically anywhere a keyboard is used."

Significantly, it is not just Macklin who is saying this - two of the top keyboard ergonomics experts in the world have given the keyboard a thumbs up - Denis Pavillard, Logitech vice-president of product marketing for desktops, and Dr David Rempel, a professor of medicine and bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley agree with her.

Macklin met Pavillard in Geneva, after simply calling to set up a meeting. He was enthusiastic and positive, but explained she would need to get a review from someone like Prof Rempel - and sent her off to California.

Prof Rempel, who is considered the world's leading authority on keyboard design, was initially formidably brisk and businesslike, recalls Macklin. Then she took out her keyboard and set it up. "He went completely silent, then he sat down and started fiddling with it. Then he looked up at me and said: 'Well, Ms Macklin, you really have something here'."

Rempel's support has opened doors at Dell, Microsoft and Intel, where she has spoken with design and innovation leaders.

She has been told it could be manufactured and sold for less than $100 (€85). But she has found it impossible to move the board to manufacture, mainly because companies and financiers are not sure of the market for a product that does not exist yet.

But Macklin counters that a fifth of all people have some disability at some point; that typing at a traditional keyboard induces about 150 separate musculoskeletal disorders, far beyond repetitive strain injuries; and that one study found that spending more than 15 hours weekly at such a keyboard would lead to progressive damage.

Employers already pay out worker compensation claims and lose worker hours due to keyboard induced injury. Children, with their intensive playing of computer games, text messaging and keyboard use from early childhood, are at serious risk, Macklin says. She is certain that keyboards must change.

Keyboards have hardly altered since their invention in the 1700s, when the layout was designed to keep the typist from working so fast that the keys entangled.

"At the time of the Industrial Revolution, the worker had to adjust to the technology. But it is time to reverse that trend," she says.

She says she came up with the design by finding the most comfortable position in which to sit and work a keypad. She has since collaborated with Dublin physiotherapist Eileen Murphy, who confirmed her keyboard rightly addressed the problem of typists leaning forward and supporting the heavy weight of their head (putting strain on the neck and shoulder area). It also positions the arms, wrists and hands so that the muscles, skeleton and nerves are not under strain.

Murphy has helped her fine-tune the current version of the board. The next version will have the rollerball mouse and keys positioned in an even more accommodating manner.

She's patented her design in Ireland, and is completing the process of getting an EU patent. At the moment, she is preparing the next prototype and waiting to hear back from a designer creating a holder for the keyboard that would clip on to a typist's chair (right now, the two halves are positioned on adjustable tripods). Enterprise Ireland has funded a feasibility study.

She has a briefcase bulging with positive reports, testimonies, and studies, and more goodwill than most entrepreneurs see in a lifetime.

But what she wants more than anything is a business angel with vision, someone who can help make the final business connections, and get the keyboard manufactured.

"There have been some low points, and the impact on my own finances have been resounding. I haven't had a holiday in years," Macklin says.

"But the driver that has kept me going is, it's just too good . . . It's time for this baby to fly the nest."