We live in a tactile world. We crave touch and tactile experiences. But in the early 1990s, our lives were forever changed when the internet exploded into worldwide consciousness, changing how humans connect and interact with each other and with the world. It was a new and exciting time, and designers were forced to think about their work in new ways, including how it would be consumed over the internet. We were thrown into a design world that was CRT-monitor-based: graphics were flat and 2-D; vectors and small bitmapped images ruled the day.

This shift offered a new way of thinking and a different way to express, as well as consume, ideas. Up until only a few years ago, this “new” world consisted mainly of staring at a computer screen and moving a mouse around to interact with information. And that setup served us well – until now, it seems.

Now, an interesting shift in technology is brewing. It’s a shift that presents new ways to think about interaction design, or how humans interact with computers. Technology is starting to allow us to escape technology, so to speak—this shift seems to be heralding a return to the familiar tactile world that we instinctively crave: a “smart” analog world. Our computers, and how we design for them, are blending with the physical, which is an interesting notion to contemplate. And as we move down this path, it’s not hard to imagine a time in the near future when digital design will seemingly disappear and become physical again.

Many current design executions embody this trend of a seamless digital/physical world:

– Mobile communication devices are getting smaller and smaller and becoming more “a part of us”

– eBook readers are designed not only to re-create the look and feel of a traditionally printed book, but also use traditional gestures to turn “pages” and move information

– Touch computers and mobile devices allow us to physically interact in a natural, tactile manner

– Apple’s application interface design mimics physical objects (calendars, address books, sheets of paper, notecards, bookshelves, typefaces that look like handwriting)

– New services from Apple and other companies allow the average consumer to design and produce their own professional-quality printed books and postcards from their digital media

– Computer games, such as the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox Kinect, require you to use your whole body to control a game, rather than just pressing buttons

– The mobile phone apps Hipstamatic and Instagram eschew the perfect digital photo in favor of mimicking the imperfect physical world of film

Clive Thompson wrote an article for this month’s issue of Wired magazine that offers a different view. He wrote of his disdain for Apple and other companies using skeuomorphic design—which means retaining design elements that previously had, but no longer have, a specific function—because, as he said, “Skeuomorphs are hobbling innovation by lashing designers to metaphors of the past. Unless we start weaning ourselves off them, we’ll fail to produce digital tools that harness what computers do best.”

I think his opinion is only partly correct. Yes, designers should look to innovate with compelling design that does not use the past as a crutch. But we also should not ignore humans’ fundamental emotional connection to the physical world. What will design look like five years from now? Ten years from now? Twenty? As computers and how we design for them evolves, it should not surprise us when, one day, we fail to even see them as digital. It’s an exciting time to be a designer and to witness this unique evolution.