This piece, A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design, really made me stop and think about how disconnected we’ve become from the physical world, even as our technology gets “smarter.” The author argues that our so-called “futuristic” devices are actually quite limited, everything has become a flat piece of glass we tap on, instead of something we truly interact with. He calls out this obsession with “pictures under glass” as lazy design — a downgrade from the richness of real, tactile experience.
What really stuck with me was his reminder of how incredible our hands are. They can sense texture, pressure, temperature, yet we now use them mainly to poke at screens. His comparison to trying to tie your shoes with numb fingers really drives it home. It’s not just that we’ve lost physical feedback, we’ve lost creativity and subtlety in how we use our bodies to understand the world.
But as much as I agree with him, I think his critique could use a bit more realism. There’s a reason touchscreens took over: they’re convenient, cheap, and universal. Designing physical, tactile, or responsive interfaces on a large scale would be expensive and hard to standardize. For example, the Apple Vision Pro tries to reintroduce gesture-based control, but even that feels awkward and unnatural for many people. It’s like we’ve already trained ourselves to think in 2D, to expect smooth glass, not texture or resistance.
Still, I think his rant is important because it challenges the direction of design thinking. It made me think about situations like education or online learning. imagine how much richer it would be if students could physically interact with virtual models or data instead of just scrolling and clicking. Or think of creative fields like art or architecture, where so much of the learning used to come from the feel of materials. Now, everything happens behind a screen.
So, while his rant might sound idealistic, it’s also a necessary wake-up call. It reminds us that innovation shouldn’t just mean “simpler” or “sleeker”, it should mean more human. The goal shouldn’t be to erase physicality for convenience, but to design technology that reconnects us to the world instead of flattening it.