One passage that really stayed with me from Bret Victor’s A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design is his statement that screens are “pictures under glass.” That phrase hit me because it’s so ordinary yet so revealing; every day I touch my phone dozens of times, yet I never actually feel anything back. Victor’s argument that we’ve limited human interaction to tapping on cold glass made me realize how passive our so-called “interactive” technologies have become. I started thinking about how my creativity, whether sketching or coding, always feels richer when my hands are physically involved; pressing, folding, shaping. It made me question: why did we let convenience replace tactility? What would technology look like if it honored the intelligence of our hands instead of reducing them to cursors?
In the Responses section, I was fascinated by how defensive many readers became, as if Victor’s critique was anti-progress. But what I sensed in his tone was care, not nostalgia; a desire to expand our sense of what interaction can mean. This really reminded me of Refik Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations, a piece I’m analyzing for another course, where data transforms into movement, color, and emotion. Anadol’s work feels like the future Victor imagines: one where technology engages the body and senses, not just the eyes.
These readings challenged my old assumption that the “best” design is the smoothest and most frictionless. Victor helped me see friction as meaningful; it’s how we feel our way through the world. I now think of design less as creating perfect efficiency and more as crafting moments of connection between body, mind, and machine. The essay left me wondering whether the future of interaction design depends not on faster touchscreens, but on rediscovering touch itself; real, textured, imperfect, human touch.
Ultimately, I completely agree with Victor’s message. His critique felt refreshing, almost like a wake-up call to slow down and rethink what “innovation” actually means. I liked how he exposed the emptiness behind shiny new interfaces and instead celebrated the physical, human side of design. Even though his tone was mainly critical, I didn’t find it negative; I found it hopeful. It made me appreciate the kind of design that makes people feel connected, not just technologically advanced.