From function to pleasure: touch, interaction, and the interspace

• Authors: Carola Moujan
• Venue: DPPI '11 Proceedings of the 2011 Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces
• Year: 2011

Tactile and haptic interaction is everywhere these days, and meant to become even more present in the years to come. Haptic devices are intuitive and have considerably increased the level of pleasure for users. However, some recent articles [Norman, 2010] underline their lack of reliability in terms of function. Weaving from phenomenology, architectural theory and the works of James J. Gibson [1966] and David Katz [1925] on tactile perception, this essay argues that in tactile devices as they are designed today, the sense of touch is used mostly as a replacement of artificial tools, and restricted to the hand only --a mechanical approach which overrides the most powerful affordances of haptics. It claims that electronic products struggle to unveil the full potential of tactile interaction because, albeit touch being used, the design strategy remains a visual one, and suggests that if we develop a tactile strategy instead, we will create deeper aesthetic experiences and increase pleasure for the users.