A Brief rant on the Future of Interactive Design
In this reading, the author voices his frustrations with current and future visions of input devices being centered on touch screens, or as he calls it Picture Under Glass. I aggree with the authors frustrations with ordinary objects moving to become less tactile and moving to resemble touch screens. For example, many new induction stoves utilize touch capacitive buttons, which become quite unresponsive when you’re cooking and have greasy fingers. Much of the “innovations” for the future now are fixing problems that were non-existent to begin with. As the author said, our hands and fingers can do much more than just touch and swipe, which is the only thin a touch screen allows us to do. What we need to innovate is a way to utilize more than this basic motion, to create technology that is able to make use off the various other features that our hands are capable of.
Responses:
The author acknowledges that no solution is possible with the current state of our technology, however, what he is trying to tell us is that our hands are capable of much more, and instead of “improving” everything by transitioning to touch screen interfaces, we need to aim to keep the tactile sensations that we are much used to and are much more used to.