Build.Log 2: Why Build A Macropad?

So if you’re following along (read Build.Log #1 right here) then you’ll know that we’re a small company making ‘Keyboards for Builders’, and the current keyboard that we’re working on is actually a macropad that we’ve called The BuildBox.

We’re hard at work getting the BuildBox macropad ready to start testing with some beta users, so that we can start working out the kinks ahead of launching it for sale sometime around Q4 2026.

A big part of launching any new product, from my experience launching a handful of products and brands over the last decade or so, is just taking any opportunity you get to discuss all the ideas you have flying around in your head for that product with smart and insightful people. That caveat of ‘insightful’ is actually quite important early on, in my opinion, because your ideas are sensitive and you want people who are actually curious and maybe even a little excited about your idea to be asking you questions, while avoiding those who lean towards just highlighting all the difficulties you face or raise half-hearted doubts about the idea’s validity (well-thought-out doubts and concerns are a good thing early on, but people just throwing worst-case scenarios at you because they generally lean towards caution and pessimism does nothing good for me. I need my friend group to be delusional enough to imagine a weird future with me).

But the point is that I like to run my ideas by insightful people. One of the most useful things about doing this is listening to the questions people ask you. There can be some real gold in the questions because they don’t contain a judgement, they’re not stating if the idea is good/bad/indifferent, they’re just trying to fill an information gap and clarify something that wasn’t clear from the outset. The questions people ask can help with writing copy and planning the positioning of your product, or help you think more deeply about some aspect of your idea that you overlooked or just hadn’t got to yet. Once in a while, the questions can lead you down a whole new or different path with your idea, but this is a rare occurrence for me because I’m not usually discussing an idea with others that I haven’t already been obsessing over myself for a long time.

With the BuildBox Macropad, other than the broad question “wtf is a macropad?” that I previously answered, the next most common question I get is “why did you decide to build that?”

I think people ask this because the macropad concept is a niche concept to a lot of people, it’s not a tool they’ve come across before unless they’re in the digital art space and have seen devices like the XP-Pen ACK05 (testing this out at the moment, neat budget macropad, although basic in functionality) or they’ve been in or around the streaming space and have seen the Elgato Stream Deck. So once I explain the macropad concept and they grok it, the next logical question is “why did you pick that?”

I’ve answered the question enough times about the BuildBox that it made sense to take 30 minutes and refine my answer once and for all, so…

Why Build A Macropad?

Traditional keyboards are designed for writing words. While we communicate and carry out our work and art through words, a lot of the tasks carried out on our devices require more interaction with software and websites than a keyboard and key-press alone allows for.

The idea of a device where each key press could be programmed to carry out an infinite combination of actions just makes sense to me, and I’ve been using macropads daily for as long as I can remember (started out reprogramming USB number keypads… those were jank as hell!).

We’ve tested the majority of macropads and keypads on the market, and none of them hit the mark; the macropad sweet spot.

We wanted an easy-to-program macropad that worked with any application we wanted, ideally with a templated macro library to pick from. We didn’t want to spend hours fiddling and tweaking to get it working right. We wanted a best-in-class scroll wheel that let us effortlessly move and scrub through timelines and make precise adjustments. And most importantly, we didn’t want to have to hold any information about what keys did what, or what layer we were on in our memory, we wanted all of our brain power focused on the task at hand. It took us a while, but we realised that this meant we needed a pixel-perfect display neatly showing us what key functions and layers were available to us at any time.

We wanted all of these things, and there was no one macropad that ticked all of the boxes. Building it became the obvious thing, and that’s why we decided to make the BuildBox macropad. It will be our first product, launching Q3-Q4 2026.

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