The word “click” will become a generational marker

I’ve been working on a project designing for tablet devices, and I keep finding I have to correct myself, and say “touch” or “tap” when I’ve just uttered the word “click”.

Last week I looked around at the other people in the room, and realised for the first time that this vocal tic is going to become a generation defining thing. If I carry on working in digital design, I’m going to end up being in rooms full of people who would never dream of saying “click”, because they’ve never designed for something that you can’t “touch”.

Rather like grandparents fondly referring to the wireless, my generation are going to carry that word “click” in our vocabulary to describe interactions long after anybody last used a mouse.