Figma’s Creator Micro made me a macro pad person with its colorful, clicky keys

Enlarge / It's coded for designers, quite literally, but the Figma Creator Micro is just a rebranded version of the stock Creator Micro from Work Louder. It is quite colorful, though. (credit: Figma)

A number of my friends, friends who aren’t streamers, have picked up Elgato’s Stream Decks. I can understand the impulse to have shortcuts, automation triggers, and fiddly little knobs within arm’s reach, without expanding the keyboard itself. But the Stream Deck’s customizable icons, upright nature, and streaming-focused app support make it a non-starter for my physical desktop. I’m a clicky keyboard person, even if I can see some intriguing non-QWERTY possibilities.

I hadn’t considered looking further into a secondary keyboard until I noticed that the makers of interface design tool Figma had collaborated with Work Louder on a custom tiny keyboard, the Figma Creator Micro. It’s a version of Work Louder’s standard Creator Micro, done up with a Figma-style color scheme and set up with four layers of shortcuts most useful inside that app, for a total of 48. It’s mechanical, it’s colorful, and it—or its more standardized cousin—might do a good bit toward improving your workflow.

Figma sent me a sample of its Creator Micro to test it out. I do not design interfaces, nor use Figma, but for all purposes, you could consider this to also be a test run of the standard Creator Micro. The two are functionally identical, minus the looks, and the pre-programming and custom shortcut keycaps included with the Figma version. Mine came with the “Clicky” (Kailh White) keys, though “Silent” (Kailh Brown) is an option.