It's hard to control interfaces within a dream, because within a dream you are not tightly bound to the parameters of your experience.
Only from an experience with tightly bound parameters can one develop reliable interfaces to other experiences. There's no point for an interface, otherwise. If experiences are loosely defined, they can blend into each other. If they are tightly defined, they either need an interface or a cleanup crew, because they will leak without an interface to what's next.
But yeah, that's why Isaac struggles so mightily to make sense (never mind utility) of phones and whatnot in his dreams. And why he does not, here in the "real world". Isaac's autistic - his parameters for experience are very tightly bound. He wouldn't be able to do this work from a physically human body that was any less sensitive.