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Asus, famous for their Eee PC, split earlier this year into three sections and one of these (now known as Pegatron) in turn created a design department called PEGA. Following a theme of “between off and on” they created 8 ‘innovative’ ‘tangible interactive products’. The first, and one that I will look at, is the Look@Me Emoticon Keyboard.

Having worked my way through the design ‘concept statements’ (something about ancient Egypt…?) I got to the keyboard, and I must say it’s quite odd. And to be fair it could well be practical for someone who does excessive amounts of instant messaging with its 40 Emoticon Elements, consisting of 18 letters and 22 symbols, which would allow you to do any emoticon of your choosing.

However, why would you really spend money on this? It’s essentially a cut down version of a keyboard that you would put next to your current one, which means you would be effectively doubling up on keys which is not only bad from a financial point of view but could well end up impractical.

All the same, I feel that this is all missing the point. They are obviously, as the flowery language suggests, design concepts which merely demonstrate (in this case quite well) modern life and how it functions. So from a practical view its mostly pointless, but as a design statement it is most certainly effective.

Product [PEGA] Via [OhGizmo!]