The trackpads and controller design were made to minimize the amount of contact that a player's thumbs would have on the trackpad when holding the unit. Early versions of the controller design included a trackball embedded in the controller to simulate mouse functionality but opted eventually for trackpads to give more customization functionality to developers including the ability to simulate the motion of trackball by tracking a finger's motion on the trackpad. Valve went through several iterations for a controller that would be able to mimic keyboard and mouse controls, using prototypes made with 3D printing to test ergonomics. However, at the January 2014 Steam Dev Days event, Valve revealed they have since dropped the touchscreen concept from the controller, rearranged existing face buttons to be more compatible with existing games.

The touchscreen would have acted like a mousepad and allow players to perform actions that typically are not capable on controllers, operating directly with Steam or SteamOS and overlaying the touchscreen display onto the players' screens to allow manipulation of the game without diverting attention from the screen. The original design of the controller was to include a touchscreen in the center of the unit.

Outside of Big Picture mode, the controller otherwise behaves as a standard two-stick controller, though Valve does plan on updating Steam to allow retaining the previously set Big Picture mode per-game settings. The Steamworks API provides means for developers to provide more detailed settings for the Steam Controller when in Big Picture mode. The controller is presently designed to be used within Steam's Big Picture mode this enables the player to access detailed options for setting up the various features of the controller on a per-game basis including button/trackpad mapping and sensitivity as well as accessing other users' shared controller configuration to use themselves. A representative configuration page for the Steam Controller, which demonstrates the array of settings that can be adjusted on a per-game basis.

Steam controller software update