San Francisco (CNN) In a world filled with touchscreens, it might feel pleasantly retro to push a physical button or twist a dial to control your smartphone.

Snap SNAP That's the thinking behind a new phone-case prototype with swappable mechanical buttons and dials. The project was created by researchers at— the parent company of photo-sharing app Snapchat — and Columbia University.

The back of the plastic case has special slots that little widgets slide into; they can be used to do things like zoom in and out with a camera app or shoot a photo, as the researchers show in a video

A prototype case lets you use buttons and dials to interact with your smartphone. It was created by researchers at Snap and Columbia University.

"We are, as a species, very touchy and feely, and I think we want to be able to not just know that we touch something, but we also like the confirmation of something having happened," Shree Nayar, director of Snap Research's imaging-focused research lab in New York, explained to CNN Business.

Nayar said the project was born out of a desire to give people tactile feedback when touching a phone, while also stopping them from covering the display with their fingers as we tend to do when using a touchscreen. And since so many phones — as well as many other mobile gadgets — have accelerometers these days, the work could be helpful for thinking about how we interact with electronics like tablets and gaming devices, too.