Everyone associates mechanical keyboards with audio ASMR. The clacking sound of the keys; the satisfaction of good key-travel, just to be capped off by a beautiful resounding clack that tells you, in no uncertain terms, that the key has been pressed. But what if we took the ASMR to its logical next step? Meet the ASMR Knitted Keyboard, a conceptual board designed to give your fingers a hug the way a good sweater does.
Before I really talk about how much I love this, yes… this keyboard was made using AI. Discovered on the Lovart (an AI agent for designers) home page, this woolen wonder from Leonor09 turns plastic into yarn, with adorably knitted and crocheted keycaps that are just a pleasure to type on. Each keycap is clad in soft wool, and flourished with an element of sweetness, be it a fruit or a baked dessert. The result? Sheer visual and tactile delight, as your eyes and your fingers fall in love with this keyboard.
Designer: Leonor09
There isn’t much to say about these keycaps aside from what’s already been said. Most keycaps I’ve covered are made of either plastic or metal, or an odd material like wood. The ones I usually lean towards are very art-driven, with small sculptures or painted details encased in resin (check these out for posterity). This particular AI experiment chooses a material I wouldn’t have expected in a hundred years. Bridging tech and textile, the knitted keycaps sort of reinterpret what ‘comfortable typing’ means for the most of us. The keycaps are cute, adorable, and warm. They might not be function (they might not even be real), but I wish I could type on them just to get a feeling of what typing on air could mean.
Again, this is all AI, but here’s what I love about it. AI serves as a great, quick ideation tool, so if anything, this is now a PSA to knitters, crocheters, and companies like Dwarf Factory to actually push out something as ridiculously avant garde as these. Will they appeal to the mechanical keyboard demographic? Broadly, no. But I’m sure there’s definitely a niche community of gamers who also love everything cute, from chibis and anime to adorable Japanese desserts, pop culture, and niche activities like knitting and baking.
Although the AI doesn’t do the best possible job visualizing the details on the keycaps, it only makes sense that they use a combination of wool and plastic. The plastic elements would be the details that interface with the keyboard, like the switches, etc. The rest of the cap can literally be made from wool (with an inner chassis, obviously), and I’m sure this would easily work. My only real concern, as much as I love these, is typing with wet hands or Cheetos-dust fingers… and maybe statuc electricity. Oh, definitely static electricity.
