Sometimes you have to build something simply because it's awesome...

For one of our projects, we had a hard time finding interface solutions that really fit the requirments, so one of our engineers did a bunch of research and came up with this design for a capacitive touch sensor button. The button boards are 1" square overall, with a button active area of 0.75" square, and they're intended to be used as faceplate buttons for a consumer device. They're based on an asic designed for this purpose, with a side-mounted LED shining into the touch surface, illuminating our Conspiratorial Hat and just generally being cool. It's hard to explain in words, so I'll simply refer you to the YouTube videos.

First, we see what we built- a demo of three self illuminating touch sensors.

Viewing a single sensor from top and side to get an idea of what it really is, you can see that tuned as we have them, the button activates just before you actually touch the device.

You can see photos of this design on its product page.
High res photos and other details available upon request.