PS-REP-195 · r1
REPRESENTATION
OBSERVED
ENGAGED
DISTANCE SETS THE AMOUNT
Further away is not the same thing larger; it is fewer things.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which one account has to be read from distances that differ by an order of magnitude, so what changes between them is not the size of the elements but how many of them can be present at all.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
MISSING
How far the reader is standing is not known to the thing being read.
TIME PRESSURE
LOW
The reading is unhurried; what fails is that it does not happen at all.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
ASYMMETRIC
Too much at distance and too little up close are failures of different kinds.
OPERATOR STATE
CONCURRENT
The far reading happens while doing something else, which is why the distance exists.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
PUBLIC SERVICESignage read while walking and a directory read while standing carry the same information and cannot carry the same amount of it.
ENERGYA wall display and a desk display show one system state, and the wall version is a selection rather than an enlargement.
MANUFACTURINGLine-side indication read from across a bay and a terminal read at the station describe the same process at different capacities.
RETAILOverhead display and handheld display carry one catalogue, and what fits at each remove is a different set.
MEDICALA bedside monitor read from the doorway and from the chair are two accounts, not two magnifications.
CONSTRUCTIONSite boards and handheld drawings carry the same plan and cannot carry the same detail.
04 WHAT AEON WORKED THROUGH HERE
The same information had to work at arm's length and across a room. Enlarging it filled the far version with things nobody could take in from there, and the near version could not be the far one with more added. The work went into what each distance is for, so that the two were different selections rather than two sizes.
The question it keeps returning to is what is dropped when the reader steps back — the version made for distance is a different account rather than the same one enlarged, and deciding what it leaves out is deciding what it is.