Resonance:

• The quality in a sound of being deep, full, and reverberating: the resonance of his voice.

• The ability to evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions: the concepts lose their emotional resonance.

Listening to the lovely and haunting Dead Already from the American Beauty soundtrack by Thomas Newman in high quality recording (lossless) and a compressed version (at 256 kbps) the beauty that is lost is in the resonance of the marimba / vibraphone and other instruments that make up the core of the musical experience. The this isn’t the white space between characters in print, but a grey space. It is beyond what is struck and to place a note in time and space, but what resonates out beyond that initial placement or use.

The last few years I have been reripping much of my musical collection as my main headphones improved, which are my main listening experience. The sound and experience is drastically different and exposes the gaps and the details that are missing in other listening environments. This combined with listening to music that is well produced and exposes and lets the musicianship and craft shine.

Resonance in Design

Thinking of resonance from an interaction design view is quite enlightening. The work of creation of usable interactions is good, but it is the first strike and it is not just white space that follows, but resonance of striking that interaction. This struck me a few years back when the iPhone came out (or one of its subsequent iterations) when I realized my Nokia E61i was faster at rendering pages and actions than iPhone, but what the iPhone did really well was manage and design the resonance after the person using the service clicked something. After striking for an action Nokia left white space and a void, but Apple crafted the grey space of resonance. Nokia would surface the result much more quickly, but with Apple that lag in the delay was not as perceivable unless you were watching the clock. Apple filled the empty space with fade-out, fade-in, activity notifications (windmill bars), which display for just a small amount of time usually. Much like the resonance of a marimba the sound and resonance can not last forever, nor very long, but it is enough to evoke beauty through filling the void.

The one or three second lag between clicking to trigger an action was painfully noticeable on a Nokia, but rather imperceivable on Apple devices. A longer delay is perceivable and painful no matter the interface and relies on engineering to resolve those issues. But, it is that resonance and understanding the design and crafting of it is what can separate a good experience from one that is more rough for the people who desire to use it and could find it of value in their life.