Topic: Even though technology evolved at a crazy pace the last 100 years, the humble button has stayed at the center of it all. (description)

Synopsis: The humble button is very under appreciated.  We don’t even know who invented it.  Most of the interaction conventions we use today were developed in the 70s, and even before.  These conventions affect how we think.  We’re transitioning to surface interaction (think iPhone touch screen)  – a shift that will also affect how we think.

Technology is shaped by us, but also shapes how we think.  For example, railroads compressed our sense of time – could move around faster.  Telegraph compressed distance – communication from afar (Chimeran war was first to be coordinated from a distance).  The radio (world wide web of its time) brought the outside world into your home.

Generations of  interaction:

1. Lever – till about 1900, was driven by electricity and mechanical devices (ex. guns)

2. Button – Physical buttons became popular around the turn of the 20th century. The personal computer and WWW brought a new level of abstraction.

3. Surface interaction – Shift is happening today

4… What next?

Mechanical age – Levers scale motion.  You can see and understand what they do.  The lever is an extension of simple tools.

Buttons – Abstracted motion.  Creates a result unrelated to the action of pushing.

1898 – the flashlight hits big time (used by NY city police), first time the button becomes part of daily life.

1890s Kodak slogan – You press the button, we do the rest.  Buttons become associated with convenience.

1900s – doorbells

1910s – light switches

1920s – The radio.  30 million sold by 1938.  Preset station buttons – first notion of “save”.

1939 world fair – key moment, included a giant cash register with 5ft high buttons.

1956 – First tv remote control (operated on sound)

1958 – Monsanto house of the future (in partnership with Disney), to promote plastics.  Push button kitchen (moving shelves).  Buttons represent luxury.

In 50′s also came to equate buttons with fear, “push the nuclear button”. Automated war.

Buttons started representing control.  Late fifties, early sixties computers (buttons and switches).

Buttons also started to represent play…

1947 – First pinball machine

1977 – Atari joystick, major moment. Next year, Simon, also stand up arcade games.  Big boom in button innovation.  Buttons started to do all sorts of things.

Button pressing dexterity became a prized skill.

1984 – Buttons become a metafor, virtual (for mainstream) with the Mac. Big conceptual shift. Apple had to buy up advertising and use it for instruction. Early Apple interface design put “pushing a button” in quotes (because they weren’t really pushing a button)

1996 – WWW, buttons lose their shape. Before that they always looked like physical buttons (or at least an abstraction of one, with a button part and a casing).  Now you had links.

Today – Can interact with a huge amount of things on a web page.  Amazon page example – almost everything can be clicked to cause an action.  We all intuitively know this.   Now, it’s normal to have links/navigation that don’t have any visual distinction at all.  Color is not the only way to indicate actionablity.  We can know they are “buttons” from their context.

Touch screens – iPhone has two old school buttons (power and menu).

Multi-touch, pinching.  “Steve Jobs hates buttons”.

Now…

Buttons don’t need borders, contours, shape, ornimintation.  Understand them by context. Associate them with a myriad number of actions.

Are approaching a point where anything can be interactive.  Ex. an interactive tablecloth, a wall that you touch to turn lights on and off, motion capture games.

4…. Dynamic tactile surfaces. Disposable physical interfaces.  Probably coming sooner than we think.  Surfaces move/change depending on interface.

The future?   Kids today can use an iPhone before they can even talk.  Who knows

p.s.  Favorite button ever – the OK button.  OK itself is now an icon.