I just read the most interesting article: “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design” by Bret Victor. (Written in response to Microsoft’s recent “Productivity Future Vision” video)

The capabilities of the human hand as demonstrated by Victor

A newbie to mobile UI design myself over the past few months, I’m observing more closely how we interact with our current technology. Tapping, swiping, expanding and retracting our fingers on a glass screen to get a desired outcome. Microsoft’s vision of the future is full of this touchscreen technology. But Victor believes our future products should provide a more tactile experience and should better cater to all of the incredible capabilities of our human hands.

We live in a three-dimensional world. Our hands are designed for moving and rotating objects in three dimensions, for picking up objects and placing them over, under, beside, and inside each other. No creature on earth has a dexterity that compares to ours… And this is my plea — be inspired by the untapped potential of human capabilities. Don’t just extrapolate yesterday’s technology and then cram people into it.

It will be interesting to see how our tools and devices operate in five, ten years. If we will still be tapping glass, or if the design community will come up with a better solution. I’ll put my thinking cap on.

On a side note, if you watched the Microsoft video, please explain to me why the woman had to fly to Johannesburg to participate in a virtual meeting??