During the keyboard derby, we learned that the visual of the key appearing under your finger when you tapped was the keyboard’s way of telling you what it saw. It was exactly the kind of feedback that can connect people and software. The letter pop-ups on the keyboard created a dialogue between the device and the typist, with the pop-ups playing the role of a backchannel, much like the head nods and “uh-huh” and “mm-hmm” utterances we sprinkle through conversations while we listen to other people speak. The stream of pop-ups let a person know the keyboard was following along, that it was
...more
Importance of feedback from the product
