The relationship of physicality and its underlying mapping

We understand how physical things work from our experience interacting with them. The cause-effect mapping instills our knowledge of interaction. We extend our knowledge of physical interactions when interacting with computing devices, especially when we do not have prior experience with those devices. But, the mapping of interaction in the digital world is not as straightforward as in the physical world. It is unclear how far the rules of physicality hold in the computing realm when the level and kind of feedback is not necessarily the same with physical effort? How do we cope when the underlying mapping is incoherent in relation to the physical control? In this paper, we report a study on Cruel Design. Its objectives are: i) to investigate the role of physicality in the physical-logical interaction, and ii) to observe the behaviors of users as incoherent mappings occur. Four conditions to illustrate the different design of mappings were presented to users. From the findings, the physical condition plays a more dominant role than having to remember the correct mapping of the logical states, and, inverting an action on the same controller (regardless the type of mapping) is the natural reaction to overshoot.