Week 1 Session: Press

The first session of the semester — the smallest possible interaction, and three different things a single press can mean

22 February 2027

A press is a discrete event: it happens once, instantly, and carries no shape of its own — no duration, no location, nothing but “it happened.” Everything this course builds for the next eleven weeks is layered on top of that one fact, so this week isolates it before anything gets added.

Before the session#

Have the toolchain running. Nothing else is expected in week 1 — no design experience, no prior prototypes.

In the session#

A short demo of three things that already use a single press for three different jobs (a light switch, a camera shutter, a stopwatch’s lap button), then the rest of the time is build time.

Studio exercise#

Build three tiny prototypes, each using only the press event — no hold logic, no timing between presses, nothing measured. In one, a press advances a counter. In one, a press toggles between two states. In one, a press fires a single irreversible effect. They should feel different from each other using nothing but that one event.

By the end#

You can tell the difference between an event (something that happens) and a value (something that has a state), and you’ve seen how much a single bit of input can already carry before anything is added to it.