Interview with the OLED keyboard guy

By now, most people will be familiar with the Optimus OLED keyboard by Russian industrial designers, Art. Lebedev Studio.

There is a new interview with the keyboard's creator, Artemy Lebvedev, here. A quick extract:

"At first, we would like to know when the developing for the optimus keyboard started. How worked the process of developing the interface? When did you get the idea to build a keyboard consisting of small displays?"

Actually I thought about such keyboard more that 15 years ago, while I was a school student. Later I became a designer, started my own design company, felt in love with industrial design and made this keyboard more real than just an idea in my mind.

"Which aspect of this keyboard got your attention at first? Was it the quite genius idea to replace buttons with displays or was it something other, such as the simple but good looking design?"

I’m one of those strange people who suffer from lousiness and mediocrity of modern keyboards. Every day I have to work with Latin and Cyrillic alphabets at the same time (btw, I switch between the two using the Caps Lock key). But standard Russian keyboard layout itself is one big mistake, so I have to use my own layout."

This thing still looks absolutely brilliant.

Thoughts? The new forum is the place for them, here.