```tracker searchType: frontmatter searchTarget: weight folder: daily notes line: title: Weight Tracker yAxisLabel: weight lineColor: blue ``` # Telegram ![[attachments/Screenshot_20240830-194744.png]] # Difficulty and Aesthetic user experience #beautyinuse #draft - Nguyen seeks to show that the aesthetic core of games is that they elicit [[pleasing actions]] from their users. - We are not going as far as saying that this is the *core* of aesthetics of design, but we are definitely trying to say that it is a significant component. - However, here, we find a difficulty: Included in Nguyen’s account is his description of three harmonies, that is, three qualities of actions that games might elicit from users. They are: - Harmony of Solution - Harmony of Action - Harmony of Capacity - However, if we look at these components it does not seem as though they will be suitable for fleshing out [[the aesthetics]] of use. -Harmony of Solution: Nguyen is explicit that this is not agentive (not about something the player *does*), and is equally well appreciated by spectators. Example, a cool move in chess. - Harmony of capacity: Nguyen is explicit that this something the real world does not provide, and it is true, it is hard to think of examples when take pleasure in working tools to our capacity. - Harmony of Action: this is more promising, we might just be able to say that using tools is aesthetically pleasing in the same way that playing games or doing a ballet is. ## Harmony of action is not a perfect fit. - In games, the aim might well be arbritary, but with tool use it isn’t - Why is this important? Because it seems important to goal use that it is goal-directed. - How do we balance gracefulness etc. with goal pursuing? - In a game we might perform an action just because it is aesthetically pleasing. - [think of an example of a game in which there is a sudden moment in which one does something silly partly because the sensation of doing this action is pleasant] - perhaps hide and seek? - one way to make making coffee more enjoyable is to play a game of hide and seek while it is boiling, but a company couldn’t make the coffee machine more pleasurable to use by putting in extranious games of hide and seek. - in fact, any sort of arbritary interaction seems annoying: - Think about the difficulty you have using your phone in one hand: - right now this is an irritation in user experience, - but one we can understand, as having to reach the top of the screen with one’s thumb is a necessary conequence of other choices which make the user experience of using a phone more convenient, such as being able to keep it in one’s pocket. - Now, imagine that Tim Apple had discovered many years ago a seamless way of making the top of one’s screen more reachable, but was making an aesthetic choice. for whatever reason, he arbritrarily wants users to reach for the top of their phones with their thumbs. He has made a design choice in order to elicit a particular action from his users. - If this were discovered, users would not stand for it. - on the other hand it does not seem right to say that users find [[easy actions]] aesthetically pleasing. The viola player’s [[aesthetic experience]] is not tied in with it being easy. ## [[The Problem]] of difficulty - this leads to a problem when considering [[the aesthetics]] of user experience. [[The problem]] of difficulty! > [!NOTE] > [[How does]] difficulty level interact with aethetic user experience? - on the one hand we want to avoid arbritariness. - on the otherhand pure easyness does not seem right either. [[Design Paper –Plans, scraps, and brainstorms]]