A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design and A follow-up article
I have never really thought much about it, but if someone were to put me on the spot and ask me which is more important, the visual or the tactile senses, I would probably choose the visual. This rant by Bret Victor has successfully changed my mind, though. I think what really convinced me was the example he gave on tying shoelaces. Indeed, I could easily tie my laces with my eyes closed, but if I numbed my hands or fingertips, I wouldn’t be able to do it anymore. This enlightenment has made me realize that I’ve never even considered the tactile aspect of any of my works, even though the first part of the course didn’t have room for it. I’m excited to take this into account for my upcoming projects since they involve physical human interaction.
I really liked the way Victor described today’s technology of iPads and phones as Pictures Under Glass. When phrased in this way, it actually makes the technology seem so boring and unintuitive. Like what do you mean our “revolutionary” technology doesn’t use the human tactile sense at all, probably one of our greatest assets? It actually gets more absurd the more I think about it.
When I moved on to the follow-up article, I found some of the comments and his response to them quite funny. But amongst all of this, the line that really stood out to me was, “Channeling all interaction through a single finger is like restricting all literature to Dr Seuss’s vocabulary.” I believe this line perfectly sums up the point Bret was trying to bring across about iPad technology only using your fingers. Where real literature’s scope goes to Shakespeare and beyond, leaving a human being with words only from a Dr. Seuss book is the dumbest thing, anyone can see that. So why can’t people see that limiting one’s fingertips- the body part with the highest density of nerve endings- to a flat, smooth screen, is dumb too? Overall, this has been one of my favorite readings so far, very eye-opening.