I really agreed with what Bret Victor was saying in “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design.” The piece did exactly what it was meant to do; it made me aware of something I never really saw as a problem before. When he talked about “Pictures Under Glass,” I honestly felt a bit called out. I’ve never questioned how flat and disconnected our interactions with screens have become; I just accepted them as normal.
Working with Arduino this semester made his point hit even harder. For some reason, it feels so much more rewarding than coding in p5, maybe because I can actually touch and see what I’m creating. It’s not just visuals on a screen; it exists in the real world. Even our first project, where we had to design creative switches that didn’t rely on hands, felt like a step toward the kind of thinking Victor wants designers to embrace.
I don’t know enough about the field to say whether designs nowadays are really “timid,” but I get where he’s coming from. The black-and-white photography analogy stuck with me; it shows how something can be revolutionary for its time but still just a transition toward something better. This reading made me rethink what “interaction” really means and imagine a future for technology that feels more connected to the body, not just the screen.