Through the painting class I am taking this semester, I am constantly learning to appreciate how rich the drawing experience is using a variety of different brushes and mediums and canvases, which makes it worlds apart from painting digitally using just a stylus. Different brushes have different handle lengths, width and feels, and depending on each of these factors combined with the type of texture I am aiming to create, I have to change my grip on the brush to create the stroke I want. Though painting is something we are all taught from a very young age, I realized I have never fully paid attention to the rich combination of grips and positions that my fingers take on unconsciously while holding the brush.
This is exactly what Bret brings to our attention through his written piece — the human hand is an extraordinary tool that can do extraordinary things. It is pitiful that the interfaces which are inevitably becoming essential parts of our daily lives strip down the magic of our bodies and reduces interaction to mere swiping and tapping. Though haptics and sensory feedback mechanisms are being incorporated into touch-screen devices, we are still far from having a truly dynamic interface that fully utilizes the human sensory capabilities and the richness of hand movements, even after 14 years of the publication of Bret’s writing. As Bret writes, the first step to solving the problem is to become aware of it in the first place. We all need to start recognizing the limitations of our current interfaces and start thinking out of the box — humans created airplanes and space rockets so I am sure that, if we start ideating, infusing our diverse lived experiences, coming together, we can create dynamic interfaces that employs more than just a single finger.