Like, just a post complaining that screens should be better An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org It’s been 19 years since Pixar released Monsters, Inc. with all that CGI hair. Where are my hairy icons? Ones that get all long and knotted as the notifications number goes up. Why can’t I feel my phone? I found that paper from 2010 (when I was complaining about keyboards) about using precision electrostatics to make artificial textures on touchscreens. I should be able to run my thumb over my phone while it’s in my pocket and feel bumps for apps that want my attention. Touching an active element should feel rough. A scrollbar should *slip. Imagine the accessibility gains. But honestly I don’t even care if it’s useful: 1.5 billion smartphone screens are manufactured every year. For that number, I expect bells. I expect whistles. A Brief Rant interactionsoftwareinterfacesdevices
In search of visual texture An Article by Rachel Prudden obliqueville.substack.com I’m now more inclined to attribute Looseleaf’s power to its visual texture than to some cognitive media-style abstraction. And the visual texture owes more to the beauty (yes, beauty!) of the original pdfs from the Vasulka Archive. Perhaps the demo is best understood not as a prototype generic tool, but as a specific curated experience in its own right, with form and content claiming equal importance in its overall success. Even so, I think there are some general lessons that can be drawn from this demo: Content is not inert Visual texture lets content breathe Visual texture lets the eye wander without losing itself Looseleaf texturetypographybeautyinterfacesvisualization