Microsoft's 2019 Vision: Seeing But Not Touching
Microsoft’s 2019 concept video, produced with its Office Labs team, offers a polished look at a future of interface design. It’s bold and visually striking, but it sidesteps an important question: how much tangible work is actually happening?
Consider the people in the video. Are they writing a report? Replying to email? Correcting mistakes made by automatic voice transcription in meeting minutes? Writing code? Drafting a blueprint or laying out a publication? Precision work is almost entirely missing from this picture.
The Case for Physical Controls
That omission is telling. Glass keyboards are awkward to use for long stretches. The vision relies on soft interfaces where haptic feedback—and physical controls in general—is largely absent. That suits many casual interactions, but it breaks down for tasks like touch-typing, nudging two design elements into alignment with arrow keys, adjusting a music player’s volume from a pocket, or dialing a phone number without looking at it.
The video is also built around vertical workspaces. Large displays that fill your field of vision are excellent for reading and viewing. But keeping your arms raised to interact with them for hours on end is tiring. That’s why horizontal surfaces have traditionally hosted the controls: it’s comfortable to input where you can rest your hands, and convenient to read where your eyes naturally focus.
Nuance, Not a New Paradigm
None of this means virtual controls are a dead end. They make a great deal of sense for interactions that don’t demand high-bandwidth or high-precision input. The iPhone’s success is a strong example. Microsoft’s concepts are impressive and worth watching—but this isn’t the final answer for interface design. It’s one piece of a broader approach, not a complete replacement for physical input.
