Digital technology has fundamentally changed the way humans interact with objects. As a consequence, the focus of product development and design processes has been shifting away from creating physical objects towards designing for interaction with digital objects. Touch-based mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers play an essential role in this shift of design paradigms.
This cumulative dissertation consists of four essays. First, we provide a holistic overview of research from multiple disciplines on the topic of exploring products through digital touch. Second, we focus on the product perspective and develop a tool that helps organizations to quantify, visualize, and communicate the user experience of their digital products.Third, we explore the digital touch interface per se. Our research provides a better understanding of how digital interaction design, particularly through visual control mechanisms, entails different effects on touch-based mobile devices relative to traditional desktop PCs. Lastly, we focus on the consumer perspective and investigate how goal orientation influences the relationship between different mobile user interfaces, consumer attitudes, and behavioral intentions.