Spatial Technology
The interface should bend before the person does
A new class of tools is learning from architecture: continuous surfaces, fewer edges, and decisions that flow instead of snap.
I spent two weeks last winter tracing how a planning team in Rotterdam moved through its review software. The surprise was not the number of panels, but the number of stops: every approval, comment, and sketch lived in a separate hard container.
Edges are decisions disguised as layout
When a tool divides the work too early, the user starts negotiating with the frame instead of the material. The better model is topographic: priority rises, context recedes, and the next action emerges from the same surface as the evidence.