The design software startup Figma is introducing its first hardware product. The Figma Creator Micro, which has 12 keys and two knobs for easy access to your most frequently used Figma tools and shortcuts, functions as a compact mechanical keyboard, sometimes known as a macro pad. Preorders for it are available now for $139, and delivery is anticipated in the first half of 2019.

There is some originality to the Creator Micro from Figma. The peripheral, a renamed version of the current Creator Micro, is the result of collaboration between the design firm and Work Louder. However, this is more than simply a Creator Micro painted with the Figma logo. According to Rob Bye, the product manager for Figma, the business has tried to preconfigure the Creator Micro with some of the most crucial shortcuts for Figma users, such as “object alignment and spacing controls, shape creation, undo-redo, [and] organizing layers.”

Essentially, the idea is to purchase Figma’s peripheral and discover that a lot of the work has already been done, rather than purchasing a Creator Micro or other macro pad and having to set it up from scratch to work with your Figma workflow. As with Work Louder’s original version, you may, of course, further alter the Creator Micro’s layout to suit your demands. The robust keyboard customization program VIA, which can manage a wide range of custom shortcuts and macros, is used to perform remapping.

While the Figma Creator Micro is intended to be used with Figma’s tools, Bye informs me that it can be configured to function with any program, so there’s no reason why you can’t get the macro pad to function with rival programs from businesses like Adobe, which is presently in the process of purchasing Figma.

The twelve keys on the Creator Micro can handle up to four distinct functions, depending on whatever “layer” the peripheral is set to. That allows you to use the macro pad to access a total of 48 distinct shortcuts. While it won’t cover every one of Figma’s more than 150 keyboard shortcuts, it might cover some of the features you use the most. Bye tells me that he uses the Creator Micro for aligning elements, displaying and hiding the user interface (UI) of the program, copying as PNG, and ungrouping and detaching components in FigJam and Figma, but he also mentions that it can be configured to control a variety of functions like generating components or switching between Figma tools.

In addition to the practical improvements, the Figma Creator Micro naturally comes with a coat of paint bearing the Figma trademark. The package comes with three keycap sets that you can attach to the low-profile mechanical switches: one set is purely black, another has the colors of Figma, and the third set has icons from the Figma program. Reminding yourself of the functions of each button while using a remappable macro pad to control software can be a difficulty, therefore these keycaps should be useful in this regard.

It’s not new to the idea of controlling Figma with a macro pad. Many instances of individuals configuring Doio and Elgato peripherals for use with Figma design software can be found on Reddit. By customizing its own peripheral to operate with Figma software out of the box, Figma’s official engagement, however, has the ability to lower the barrier to entry and encourage the use of macro pads to a far wider audience.