Thingness is a consequence of physicality. Objects have boundaries, but even these are a function of context. Soak them, roast them, freeze them, squeeze them, drop them or swing them and their forms may no longer endure. Our idealized reification of things strips away contingencies to construct ‘normal’ encounters and usage, but every property that we attribute (e.g., colour, weight, strength) is the result of interactions in context.

Digital objects have little in the way of obvious boundaries. They blend into the world of interactive usage, making it hard to assign fixed properties or qualities to them. The language and concepts of physical product design do not transfer well to interaction design. Few aesthetics of form can be immediately perceived as with physical objects. The same holds for affordances, which are strictly physical (see Don Norman on this in Interactions, May 1999). Instead, aesthetics and affordances unfold within the user experience. Furthermore, users’ evaluations of interactions evolve beyond the ‘end’ of an experience. What endures here cannot be properties of the digital artifact or the interaction. Instead they are properties of the world, inscribed in people, places and things. This is why we interact with all objects in the first place…