Bret Victor’s “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design” makes us think about how we describe and imagine “interaction.” Victor criticises the way we create interactions by saying that we should not limit them to finger swipes on touchscreens and instead use our hands and other senses.
He says that one of the main problems with the business is that it only cares about “pictures under glass,” while touchscreens are now used for everything. He says that this method doesn’t use the full ability of human hands, which can do a lot more than just swipe or tap. This made me think: How often have I just used touchscreens or buttons as “interactive” features without thinking about how they use or more importantly limit our physical abilities?
This interpretation also begs a crucial question: “How much have we actually improved the ways in which the ‘interactive system’ gives us feedback when we interact with something?” Actually, we are not even near enough to create a significant kind of interactive system. This is so because we neglected haptic feedback. Our hands are a collection of many kinds of sensors: heat, pressure, force, electrical, and so on. Although Victor’s perfect is employing hands in a whole spectrum of natural movements, I think haptic feedback may help to design interaction going forward.
Finding the substitutes for actual haptic input interests me as an engineering student. To replicate physical input, I may use motor vibrations, tension-based devices, or even resistance-based sensors. That is why in my creative switch project, I used a pulley mechanism to lift the connecting switch, which is to invite the user into engaging in an interactive physical system and is able to feel a sense of ‘weight’.