Living Switches are a family of thought starters that explore one possible future for physical interfaces.  Through smartphones, the level of user experience we expect from our interfaces has risen – but physical interfaces have been a bit forgotten, working in much the same way they always have.  

We wanted to answer the question:  What if we updated physical interfaces for the digital ages? How might they look different? 

New technologies can be layered to create surprising interactions with new use cases. Using well established smartphone technology – we can sense proximity in multiple ways – by combining this with something as simple as a button – you create an object with many more use cases that can respond to it’s environment in new and interesting ways.

Physical interfaces still work much the much the way they always have, historically driven by the construction method of the underlying component, even when it didn’t quite suit the use-case.  We wanted to flip this historical approach on its head – if we start with the ideal interaction – what kind of interface to you end up with? Often the technology exists to make it happen – it’s just our thinking that has stopped to happening.