PS-REP-214 · r1
REPRESENTATION
OBSERVED
ENGAGED
SIGNAL ONLY IF LEARNED
Two short pulses mean yes to whoever was told so.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which confirmation is given through a code with no resemblance to what it stands for, so it carries meaning only to someone who has been taught it, and the surface that would have taught them is the one that is absent.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
MISSING
What the pattern stands for is not available anywhere the person receiving it is.
TIME PRESSURE
SHORT
The signal is brief; there is no reading it twice.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
ASYMMETRIC
Missing a confirmation and misreading one as its opposite are failures of different size.
OPERATOR STATE
CONCURRENT
The person is doing something else and receives the confirmation through the body.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
MEDICALDevice tones distinguish states by a code that carries nothing of what it stands for.
INDUSTRIALMachine signals encode conditions in patterns that must be learned away from the machine.
MOBILITYVehicle feedback distinguishes outcomes by rhythm, and the rhythm resembles nothing it reports.
MANUFACTURINGStation indications use a scheme that is taught in induction and met on the floor.
PUBLIC SERVICEQueue and status signals rely on conventions the people using them were never given.
CONSTRUCTIONSite alerts encode kind and severity in patterns learned by working there rather than from the signal.
04 WHAT AEON WORKED THROUGH HERE
With nothing to show, confirmation had to be carried by a pattern felt in the hand — short twice for done, long once for not. Anyone told what that meant read it instantly; anyone who was not felt a buzz. The place where such a thing would normally be learned is the screen, and the screen was the part that had been removed. The work went into how few things need a code at all, and into which of them can be made to resemble what they stand for.
What stays unresolved is where such a code is learned — teaching it takes a surface the situation does not have, and leaving it untaught produces a signal people feel and cannot read.