via Thinking with Sound (CHI ‘24)
What it says
If you cannot tell what a thing is for, you do not use it — you investigate it. And that investigation is not a delay before the real activity; it is the activity. Thinking with sound rather than thinking about sound.
Does it hold for my work
It contradicts the rest of my position, which is why it is worth keeping visible instead of quietly dropping.
Meaningful play requires the relation between action and result to be discernible. My own definition of gamefulness requires legible rules. The controller as cultural symbol is an argument for maximum legibility — you already know what to do with it before anyone tells you.
The strange tool says the opposite: legibility ends the exploration.
The version I might still need
Not for the object, but for the mapping. The controller can be completely familiar while what it does stays strange — you know how to press, you do not yet know what pressing produces. That is a clear rule with an unknown consequence, which may be the actual shape of the experience I want.
Which is also exactly the crack in Phosphor: architecture to reverb is legible, gaze to harmony is not. I have been treating that as a defect. This concept says it might be the interesting part — and I do not yet know which reading is right.