Tangible Interfaces by Steve Turbek

Tangible Interfaces Class

Contents

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This page contains the materials for the Tangible Interfaces Senior Industrial Design Studio at Pratt Institute, created by Steve Turbek in 2025.

The studio focuses on designing with tactile and sensory components to build interactive user experiences embodied in physical products. The studio is built around on iterative making with extensive use of 3D modeling and printing. It will introduce basic electronics using the BBC Microbit, a very simple computer board with a rich sensor package and excellent introductory software. No previous experience of UX or electronics is expected.

We explore the theory and practices of the User Experience Design Process in the context of physical design. Our objects must not only be beautiful, we must have the open mindset to validate our designs with users to improve them.

Key Projects

Spencer Maher Leon Shi Jinlin Wang Team Wonder Four Sub cockpit Team Sub Marine sub cockpit Team B.A.S.S. sub cockpit _(Photos of student work, used with permission)_

Class Description

Tangible Interfaces are an opportunity for designers

”Software is eating the world” claimed Marc Andreessen in 2011. Its all-consuming hunger is ravaging the product design landscape. Many consumer products, from camera to Walkman to in-car controls are now simply apps on a featureless glass oblong. This leads to bland product design and customer dissatisfaction. In car design, this has even become a safety concern. “Physical buttons are increasingly rare in modern cars The driver in the worst-performing car control system needs four times longer to perform simple tasks than in the best-performing” link

An era where “everything is an app and all apps look the same” is also an opportunity for industrial designers to create innovative new products. In Tangible Interfaces, the student is invited to think beyond the screen and design for touch, hearing, and the dozens of other senses that people have.

What’s your favorite instance of haptic nostalgia—the poignant memory of the physicality of an obsolete thing—like dialing a rotary phone, shifting gears in a manual transmission, opening a soda can with a pull ring? Erin McKean (@emckean.bsky.social)

Class Schedule

Project 1: Design a Fidget Toy (Week 1-2)

Warm up design exercise and skills assessment. Feel free to be inspired by the many that exist.
What feels good? Why?

Class 1

  • Intro to class

Homework: Find and 3D print (or make) 1-3 “interesting to feel” fidget toys. make a slide for each about why it is interesting.

  • Purchase basic microbit and electronics components

Class 2

  • Class discussion on fidget toys
  • Pencil sketching for your ideas

Homework

  • Sketch, Sketch, Sketch!
  • remember to 3D print test models early!

Class 3

  • In-process presentations & discussion
  • Work on final models

Homework: final 3D model & presentation

Final Presentation

  • Presentations of fidget toys
  • In class discussion
  • Write documentation and share to 3D sharing sites
  • Introduce Project 2

Project 2 Media Remote Control Design (Week 3-5)

Design Brief: Design and make a working object that can control music/video on your laptop or phone.

Class 5 Intro to Microbit software and hardware

homework: sketch physical design of remote control

Class 6 (monday) Present sketches, discuss Workshop with high school STEM students (as consulting engineers) to explore sensor mechanisms and coding. Date TBD

Class 7 In class work on 3D model, software, & electronics

Concepts

  • Basic Program flow (On Start, Forever)
  • Pause, loops, If statements

Class 8 In class work on 3D model, software, & electronics

Concepts

  • Analog readings - proportion of voltage, compared to reference
  • Why 1023? Binary counting, slices and resolution
  • Map function in Microbit editor
  • Controlling Servos

Class 9 In class work on 3D model, software, & electronics

Homework: Bring finished models, software, electronics, with a Presentation milanote board.

Final Presentation

  • Present products with marketing slides and or video
  • Discussion, Debrief
  • Introduce Project 3
  • Pick 4 teams of 3 people

Project 3: Submarine Cockpit

The final team design project is to design and prototype controls for the next generation of personal submersibles.

Case Study: Car Dashboard Design

The design of in-car interfaces has become increasingly controversial as touchscreens replace traditional physical controls, creating a tension between technological advancement and user safety. Customers and safety researchers have expressed clear preference for physical over touch screen controls.

Safety concerns are paramount, as research consistently shows touchscreens require visual attention, taking drivers’ eyes off the road for dangerous periods. Despite these concerns, economic factors drive touchscreen adoption, as automakers find them cheaper to manufacture and update than physical components. The “Tesla effect” has been significant, with Tesla pioneering large touchscreens in cars with the 2012 Model S, setting a trend other manufacturers followed. However, regulatory intervention is emerging, with safety authorities like Euro NCAP beginning to require physical controls for critical functions. Consumer experience has evolved too—after initial enthusiasm, many drivers find touchscreens frustrating in real-world driving conditions. In response, a hybrid approach is developing, with the industry moving toward combining physical controls for essential functions with touchscreens for secondary features. Some experts suggest voice interfaces might eventually reduce reliance on both touchscreens and physical buttons, though haptic feedback limitations remain a fundamental issue, as touchscreens lack the tactile feedback that allows drivers to operate controls without looking away from the road.

As an exercise in forensic design, why did this trend start, why did it last so long, and why might it be changing now.

Interestingly, the new apple car play addresses very few of the safety concerns above

Tips for class

“Looks like” and a “Works like” prototypes

Students sometimes compromise the designed form of their design model to accommodate the prototype electronics. We don’t make that mistake in this class.

Your design may be too small to hold the electronics, that is totally normal early in the design process. That’s why we make “looks like” (aka actual size and shape) models, to see how it feels, and also, larger prototypes to test interaction, So for example, if you were designing an electronic ring remote, you could make one the size of a bracelet, or have the wires coming out into a box. Totally normal for prototyping.

When designing modern products, Designers and Engineers often make a “looks like” and a “works like” prototype. They are often look totally different until late in the engineering process. The goal of ‘works like’ prototypes is to quickly change and learn. Form follows function, but often you don’t know what the function looks like! Example of a “works like” prototype: the original iPhone Prototype

Tech Tips Triage for Microbit

  • Make sure to check if sensor or motor needs 5v vs 3v. Some sensors need more volts or amps. Sometimes adding a power cable or battery pack just makes it work
  • Make a firm base to attach things to
  • Tape down wires. Often loose wires are the problem
  • If using the T shaped microbit edge connector for a breadboard, put the battery pack into the T shaped connector, not the microbit.
  • Which pins are always safe to use? 0,1,2
  • LED ENABLE code command interferes with pins reading or writing, which can be confusing
  • Watch out for multiple forever loops
  • Keep your main program loop fast, so you can sample data frequently
  • Be very careful with pauses - the microbit doesn’t do ANYTHING when paused and will miss input or output.
  • When powered just by microbit, a servo range is 90 degrees and is slower
  • When powered with 6 AA, servo range goes to 180 degrees, is faster
  • I2EE LCD screen - remember to adjust polarity or can look off

Reference: Microbit

The microbit is a small and inexpensive computer and circuit board, which can be programmed via a web browser with simple coding. It has a surprising number of sensors and features built in.

Materials to get

Microbit Documentation

Introduction to Microbit

Microbit Class code samples

  1. Compass
  2. Accelerometer Tilt Game
  3. Ultrasonic Distance Sensor In microbit code editor, open “extensions”, search for ‘Sonar’ and add. example project Example video
  4. Basic Analog sensor
  5. Analog-data-smoothing More advanced concept to be aware of
  6. Rotary encoder
  7. Rotary encoder with RGB Color Picker
  8. Servo simple
  9. Control Servo with potentiometer
  10. Servo sonar with smoothing
  11. Joystick as input
  12. Flappy pixel
  13. Flappy Servo
  14. Wireless Social Network Choose “Micro Chat” Tutorial

Tangible Design Inspiration

Tangible Tech Inspiration

Fidget Toys

Physical / Digital Prototyping Tools

Reference: Readings

Books

Essays, Articles

Reference: Design Process

There are LOTS of diagrams to convey some intangible ideas and best practices of design.

Accessibility and Inclusive Design Resources

Figma plugins for accessibility