```tracker searchType: frontmatter searchTarget: weight folder: daily notes line: title: Weight Tracker yAxisLabel: weight lineColor: blue ``` The aim of the next 30 minutes is to try to get unstuck on [[the aesthetics of design]] paper. What is [[the problem]]? Part one of the paper is an argument that [[the aesthetics of design]] must include experiences of use. The second part is supposed to put some meat on the bones of this idea. But what do I mean by this expression? Well [[the idea]] would be to say something about what sorts of aesthetic experiences we can have while using objects. Another way of putting this is - What about difficulty, that is something about which I have a lot to say. - Nguyen says puts forward the harmony of capacity as something quite unique to games. - One of the things he uses it for is as a means of explaining why people enjoy playing difficulty games. - specificially, he says that it is the feeling of working at the limits of our capcities, a feeling the real world does not give us very often at all, that is enjoyable. The task and our capcities fit. - The harmony of capcity gives us a means of explaining games’ relation to difficulty, but this explanation cannot be imported into aesthetics of design. - it seems that there is a relationship between difficulty and easiness when it comes to using objects. - consider the viola player. If we grant that she gets some agentive, aesthetic satisfaction from her playing, we can ask why this sort of action would be aesthetically pleasurable? - One possibility is that it is aesthetically pleasing because, being a professional violist, playing the viola is easy for her. But this does not seem right. - her, and our, lives are filled with very [[easy interactions]] with objects –flicking the light switch. - second, if it were a case of easiness = aesthetic pleasing, then the easier the piece, the more [[aesthetic pleasure]] she would get. [[This seems]] clearly wrong. Surely, playing Tsychovsky, is more aesthetically pleasing to her than playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. - Yet the contrary position also seems wrong. If a piece was extremely difficult then we would expect that to affect her satisfaction in playing as well. - more generally, we can say that objects are made in order to make various tasks either possible to complete (you can’t cook unless you have a cooker, hob, hotplate etc.) or at least easier (you could carry all of your camping equipment around with you by holding it all in your arms, but a backpack makes things a damn sight easier). - Finally, the harmony of capcity itself does not seem a very good way of dealing with these issues either. -the game that Nguyen talks about might be fun, but would we really want to be in this state of slightly panicked exhilaration all of the time? - This is [[the problem]] of difficulty. - [[How does]] [[the problem]] of difficulty relate to my idea of fleshing out [[beauty in use]]? - Nguyen uses harmony of capacity to explain why a particular aspect of games is aesthetically pleasing. - design has a different problem. [[The question]] is not ‘why do we enjoy difficult actions’, but ‘what is the relation of difficulty and aesthetic satisfaction’ - Nguyen’s account allows him to say something about the sorts of [[aesthetic pleasure]] that can be elicited by games.