A brief rant on the future of interaction design (2011)
This is probably my all-time favorite article on the internet. I've brought it up in conversation dozens of times when referring to ways to control computers. It's why I don't really use phones for anything beyond answering phone calls and handling urgent tasks when I'm not at home/office. I just feel like I have very little control over these devices, unlike the massive control with a keyboard or mouse, or even better, a fork and spoon when eating dinner (although despite its high degree of control, you can't control a computer with them).<p>Tech innovators and its users/consumers need to think outside of the box more often for ways to control computers. Given a physical UI device, you can place it on a spectrum of "computer-friendly to human-friendly". Touch screens are computer-friendly because it's trivial for computers to understand and developers to interact with. The downside is that users feel distanced from their control, so it is difficult to use efficiently. But developers are smarter than users at UI---the difficulty should be put on them instead, to control their software/OS.<p>I've imagined things like stress balls with "electric muscles" for feedback to control various applications, a cube with the ability to change its texture with suction/servos, and things like <a href="https://roli.com/products/seaboard" rel="nofollow">https://roli.com/products/seaboard</a> or <a href="https://www.expressivee.com/buy-touche" rel="nofollow">https://www.expressivee.com/buy-touche</a> except for general computing applications rather than music performance. Who knows what could be invented if customers could be convinced their computing experience can be improved with better physical interfaces.