In their text, Victor addresses the body as a sensorial object and the shortcomings of touchscreen devices as haptic tools. While the text was focused on the importance of motor skills in interaction design, it’s interesting to revisit this thought almost 15 years later in the era of algorithms. Quoting the author:
“A tool addresses human needs by amplifying human capabilities. That is, a tool converts what we can do into what we want to do.”
In 2025, as social media platforms reign as an indispensable tool for many designers, many become to form a toxic relationship with their addictive interfaces. Fueled by the exponential growth of megacorporations that sell each minute spent on an app to a third-party advertiser, the relationship between the tool and its user becomes blurred.
While most of us might have been born with a lucky set of able hands, technological tools are often conditioned by a price. In platform capitalism, interaction has thus become currency, where screen time in cyberspace gets converted into real-world capital. In their text, Victor concludes:
“People choose which visions to pursue, people choose which research gets funded, people choose how they will spend their careers.”
While putting aside the obvious issue of unbalanced opportunities for designers coming from low socioeconomic backgrounds, in a hyperconnected world where everything is seen in real-time, do we even have the option to opt-out of working with tools that are toxic to us?
Bret Victor “A brief rant on the future of interaction design”, Bret Victor (blog), November 8, 2011, accessed 26 October, 2025, https://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/