PS-REP-157 · r1
REPRESENTATION
OBSERVED
ENGAGED · ONGOING
STANDING FIGURE COST
What must never be looked for is also what must never be in the way.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which a quantity has to stay readable without being sought, so it cannot sit behind an action, while the area it would occupy is the area the primary work needs, and moving it to the edge exchanges one failure for the other.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
UNRECORDED
Whether the standing figure was read is not captured anywhere, so its failure is invisible until it matters.
TIME PRESSURE
SUSTAINED
The figure must hold across a long period in which it mostly does not change.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
DEFERRED
Missing the change does not cost anything at the moment it is missed.
OPERATOR STATE
CONCURRENT
The reader is doing the primary work and the standing value competes with it for the same area and the same attention.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
AVIATIONQuantities that must never be searched for occupy the area the primary display needs, and the ones that change least are the ones that stop being seen.
MEDICALContinuously present figures sit at the margin of a display whose centre is doing the work, and hold their position whether or not anything about them has moved.
LOGISTICSRemaining capacity has to be legible without an action to retrieve it, on a surface already committed to the current state of the operation.
ENERGYReserve figures are placed where they will not obstruct and are therefore placed where a change in them arrives unannounced.
DEFENSEAvailable resource has to remain readable at a glance without taking the area the situational display occupies.
04 WHAT AEON WORKED THROUGH HERE
This arrived as a placement question and turned out to be an attention question. Put at the edge, the figures kept the working area clear and stopped being read; put inside it, they were read and took the room the work needed. The work went into what makes a standing figure re-enter attention when it changes, rather than into where it sits.
The question it keeps returning to is what a permanently visible value owes the reader when nothing about it has changed for hours — the figure that is always correct is the one that stops being read.