PS-INP-194 · r1
INPUT
OBSERVED
ENGAGED
CONTINUOUS UNDER DISCRETE
The control was made for a hand that slides; the only hand available presses.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which one control has to exist under input methods of different resolution, so a setting reached by sliding is also reached by stepping, and the substitution changes not only how it is operated but which values it can practically hold.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
MISSING
Which values are practically reachable under each input is not stated anywhere.
TIME PRESSURE
LOW
Nothing is urgent; the cost is that the setting is left where it was.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
SYMMETRIC
Making the stepped version too coarse and too fine fail in similar measure.
OPERATOR STATE
DEDICATED
The person is adjusting this and nothing else at the moment they meet the limit.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
MEDICALA setting adjusted by a dial on one device is adjusted by keys on another, and the keyed version cannot reach the values the dial reaches easily.
MOBILITYThe same function is offered on a touch surface and on a rotary control, and each reaches a different part of its range comfortably.
INDUSTRIALA parameter set from a panel and from a handheld is one parameter with two very different reachable ranges.
PUBLIC SERVICEA service usable by pointer and by keyboard alone offers the same control through inputs that cannot express the same thing.
RETAILA selection made by dragging on one surface is made by stepping on another, and long ranges become impractical on the second.
MANUFACTURINGEquipment adjusted at the machine and from a station shares one setting and two resolutions of control.
04 WHAT AEON WORKED THROUGH HERE
The same setting had to be reachable by a hand that slides and by a hand that presses in four directions, and the second cannot express what the first can. Treating the stepped version as a lesser copy left it unusable at the values that mattered. The work went into what the control is for, so that each input method could reach that rather than imitate the other.
What stays unresolved is whether the two are the same control — calling them one thing keeps the product coherent and conceals that one of them cannot reach what the other can.