A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design by Bret Victor

"Go ahead and pick up a book. Open it up to some page.

Notice how you know where you are in the book by the distribution of weight in each hand, and the thickness of the page stacks between your fingers. Turn a page, and notice how you would know if you grabbed two pages together, by how they would slip apart when you rub them against each other.

Go ahead and pick up a glass of water. Take a sip.

Notice how you know how much water is left, by how the weight shifts in response to you tipping it.

Almost every object in the world offers this sort of feedback. It's so taken for granted that we're usually not even aware of it. Take a moment to pick up the objects around you. Use them as you normally would, and sense their tactile response — their texture, pliability, temperature; their distribution of weight; their edges, curves, and ridges; how they respond in your hand as you use them.

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?"

Full Article:http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/

This article was a unique look at human-centered design. Computer and electronic devices have been migrating to touch screen interfaces for the past decade, and it is generally assumed that this is the future of user interfaces. This article argues that our fingers are good for more than pointing at things, they are also good at feeling and manipulating things. If we are going to dream of ambitious future interfaces, we should aim for technologies that fully utilize our human capabilities.