Device makers turned off buttons, but now they’re back

Once upon a time, your phone probably had 10-plus buttons, your oven had a physical dial, and between the heating, air conditioning and radio, your car had knobs galore.

And, while the advent of touchscreens and digital controls seemed to throw a lot of that out the window, physical controls may be having another moment. Buttons are reappearing on appliances and steering wheels. Even Apple, a brand arguably built on minimalistic design, added two new buttons to the latest iPhone.

Rachel Plotnick, an assistant professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, and author of “Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing,” joined “Marketplace” to share what’s driving this change and what it can tell us about how we interact with the world around us.

“Buttons are often that kind of go-to interface that give us that feeling of agency and control, that have a lot of tactile feedback,” Plotnick said. “And so I would be hard-pressed, to use a button pun, to really imagine this kind of total disappearance of push-buttons.”

Use the player above to hear more.