Designing for Touch

INTRODUCTION

FOR DECADES, we explored the digital world with prosthetics called mouse, keyboard, and cursor. We nudged plastic bricks across our desks. We directed onscreen arrows to poke buttons from afar. We clicked icons. We pointed at pixels.

But then we started holding those pixels in our hands. Thanks to smartphones, billions of people wrangle touchscreens every day, all day. We now touch information itself: we stretch, crumple, drag, flick it aside. This illusion of direct interaction changes the way we experience the digital world, and it requires designers to adopt new techniques and perspectives. Touch introduces physicality to designs that were once strictly virtual; for the first time, digital designers have to ask themselves,