A Brief Rant on the Future of Interactive Design + Follow-up
The first minute of the Microsoft video envisioning the future seemed really cool to me, but as it went on, the video kept repeating the same ideas over and over again. It felt like our future was limited to one or two movements. The rant definitely opened up my eyes to the subconscious abilities our hands possess. Maneuvers and motions we’ve been doing since young have become so natural we don’t realize just how powerful this sense is. The rant and response to comments made about the rant reminded me of the movie Wall-E where in the distant future, all the humans become so reliant on screens, they become unable to use their body. Living life through a screen when we’re blessed with so many degrees of motion immobilizes you; we see it even now as people get more glued to screens and are constantly sitting or lying down. I do wonder though what some potential solutions to this “picture under glass” future would be. I’m thinking about somehow incorporating textures, weight, and 3D objects because the main problems mentioned were how our hands have the ability to sense and manipulate things from touch, but a 2D glass screen avoids all of that. Or maybe centering designs around actions we can perform like flipping pages, pinching things, twisting, squishing, etc. Maybe even taking inspiration from bigger actions like planting flowers, steering and feeling the torque of the wheel, or feeling water and how it sways under the force of your hands.