Roya Ramezani made a rather interesting observation during her time working in Silicon Valley. While the gender imbalance was glaringly obvious, it had its effects on the way women worked in the male dominated environment. Roya noticed that women would often not speak their mind, or would do so sparingly, making use of words that were perceived as self-effacing and hesitant.

Highlighting the difference between one’s actual vocabulary and one’s spoken vocabulary, Ramezani designed the Exponent Keyboard, aimed at empowering women through text. Designed to look like Thomas Hansen’s Writing Ball Typewriter, the Exponent Keyboard allows your hands to circle around the product, making you feel in control… However, its true achievement lies in the fact that above the QWERTY layout sits a set of orange keys that allow you to add more impactful words to your sentences, making your typed pieces of text sound confident and assertive. The keyboard tracks keystrokes and uses its own server to analyze text and suggest more powerful alternatives, allowing you to input words like “Believe”, “Claim”, “Insist”, and “Disagree” into your text at the press of a button.

Empowered text helps build one’s self confidence not just behind the computer, but everywhere else too, allowing women to communicate more freely and have their thoughts and opinions heard in the powerful manner they deserve to be!

Designer: Roya Ramezani