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Bret Victor's "A Brief Rant On The Future Of Interaction Design" is just as relevant now as it was back in 2011: > There's a reason that our fingertips have so

Bret Victor's "A Brief Rant On The Future Of Interaction Design" is just as relevant now as it was back in 2011: > There's a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called "work" for millions of years. > Now, take out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit. > What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing? I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade. > Is that so bad, to dump the tactile for the visual? Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat. > Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It's a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it's the star player in every Vision Of The Future. http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... (that second-to-last paragraph is surprisingly on the nose with the car metaphor)

zaroth 7y ago
And yet, every single phone today is nothing but a “picture under glass” and, far from a paradigm of permanent numbness, humans are intimately connected to these devices they carry with them everywhere. Rant is the right way to describe this. Do you remember the first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen? The joy of panning and zooming around, tapping to learn more about any particular point! I remember that first experience was a total rush and extremely stimulating. Feeling like the digital map was connected to my fingertip as you pan with that point stuck under your finger — absolute magic. There are some interfaces which are absolutely superior when provided as picture under multi-touch glass. Denying a touchscreen entirely is to make huge compromises in the overall experience when configuring something as fully featured as a modern vehicle.
- kevinconroy 7y ago
  Even if it's a rant, it doesn't mean it's wrong. At CES a decade ago, I got to play with a touchscreen prototype that offered tactile feedback. Press a button and the screen would push back and/or buzz (it's been a while, hard to remember). What I do know is that it _felt_ like I was pushing on something, not just glass. At the time, it required a big area around it. Think ATM sized. For an ATM, it'd be awesome. I'd hope Moore's law would get the tech down to phone size by now, but here we are with more apps and no tactile feedback.
  - imran3740 7y ago
    > Press a button and the screen would push back and/or buzz What do you mean by "press"? "Pressing" a button (ie. pressing down on it) requires a bit more force than just touching it, so this seems like bad UX to me. Even if you only were to have the device buzz as you touch any interactive control, I feel like that would start to feel real gimmicky real fast. There's probably a reason that technology didn't make it past CES.
  - PascLeRasc 7y ago
    There's Apple's 3D Touch, which I think is pretty great but it seems like they're trying to phase it out. It'd be nice to have an iOS keyboard with some slight amount of tactile feedback - moving the cursor around with feedback feels pretty nice and makes navigation much easier than without it.
  - stinky613 7y ago
    Audi has this kind of feedback on their newer touchscreens
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  You miss the point entirely: he acknowledges that touchscreens work. But he points out that they work by visual feedback only, and that this denies an enormous part of our tactile senses. In an ideal world, we would not have to choose between tactile and visual.
  - 7y ago
pier25 7y ago
He has a point in some contexts. Touchscreens will never replace real keyboards for people who make their living typing but can easily replace a scroll wheel for mindless browsing.
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  Your example is essentially an instance of of "touch screens can replace the <tactile input device> in contexts where one does not benefit from extra feedback from touch", which is true but not exactly surprising. I would say that in a car, being able to navigate an interface without ever taking eyes of the road is a very clear example of a context where tactile feedback adds a lot
superzadeh 7y ago
now that I think of it, this might be the reason I actually decided to go for a blackberry key 2. I knew the keyboard was better for me somehow, just couldn't really pinpoint why.
- metaphor 7y ago
  My current phone is a Key2. Before that, I had 3 Privs, a handful of Curves, and several Palms. For me, it has always been about tactile feedback: I habitually text and drive, so a physical keyboard that allows for high accuracy without looking at the screen is an absolute imperative...everything else is a secondary consideration.

zaroth 7y ago

And yet, every single phone today is nothing but a “picture under glass” and, far from a paradigm of permanent numbness, humans are intimately connected to these devices they carry with them everywhere. Rant is the right way to describe this. Do you remember the first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen? The joy of panning and zooming around, tapping to learn more about any particular point! I remember that first experience was a total rush and extremely stimulating. Feeling like the digital map was connected to my fingertip as you pan with that point stuck under your finger — absolute magic. There are some interfaces which are absolutely superior when provided as picture under multi-touch glass. Denying a touchscreen entirely is to make huge compromises in the overall experience when configuring something as fully featured as a modern vehicle.

kevinconroy 7y ago
Even if it's a rant, it doesn't mean it's wrong. At CES a decade ago, I got to play with a touchscreen prototype that offered tactile feedback. Press a button and the screen would push back and/or buzz (it's been a while, hard to remember). What I do know is that it _felt_ like I was pushing on something, not just glass. At the time, it required a big area around it. Think ATM sized. For an ATM, it'd be awesome. I'd hope Moore's law would get the tech down to phone size by now, but here we are with more apps and no tactile feedback.
- imran3740 7y ago
  > Press a button and the screen would push back and/or buzz What do you mean by "press"? "Pressing" a button (ie. pressing down on it) requires a bit more force than just touching it, so this seems like bad UX to me. Even if you only were to have the device buzz as you touch any interactive control, I feel like that would start to feel real gimmicky real fast. There's probably a reason that technology didn't make it past CES.
- PascLeRasc 7y ago
  There's Apple's 3D Touch, which I think is pretty great but it seems like they're trying to phase it out. It'd be nice to have an iOS keyboard with some slight amount of tactile feedback - moving the cursor around with feedback feels pretty nice and makes navigation much easier than without it.
- stinky613 7y ago
  Audi has this kind of feedback on their newer touchscreens
vanderZwan 7y ago
You miss the point entirely: he acknowledges that touchscreens work. But he points out that they work by visual feedback only, and that this denies an enormous part of our tactile senses. In an ideal world, we would not have to choose between tactile and visual.
- 7y ago

pier25 7y ago

He has a point in some contexts. Touchscreens will never replace real keyboards for people who make their living typing but can easily replace a scroll wheel for mindless browsing.

vanderZwan 7y ago
Your example is essentially an instance of of "touch screens can replace the <tactile input device> in contexts where one does not benefit from extra feedback from touch", which is true but not exactly surprising. I would say that in a car, being able to navigate an interface without ever taking eyes of the road is a very clear example of a context where tactile feedback adds a lot

superzadeh 7y ago

now that I think of it, this might be the reason I actually decided to go for a blackberry key 2. I knew the keyboard was better for me somehow, just couldn't really pinpoint why.

metaphor 7y ago
My current phone is a Key2. Before that, I had 3 Privs, a handful of Curves, and several Palms. For me, it has always been about tactile feedback: I habitually text and drive, so a physical keyboard that allows for high accuracy without looking at the screen is an absolute imperative...everything else is a secondary consideration.