> However, it's following physical precedent that's well understood
The physical precedent would be to show the behaviour as the button image (play) and then the depressed/undepressed visual state would show if the behaviour was active or not. Software designers didn't follow this and invented swapping between the play/pause icons causing this new confusion. Not for any user friendly reason, more because skeuomorphic 3d buttons went out of fashion.
> It's also (usually) obvious
The only virtue of indicating the state at all is for when you have a problem. Very common for audio at least (muted sound, unplugged headphones, linux audio drivers have become borked again... sigh).
I still get that twang of cognitive dissonance when I see play/pause buttons and have to think about it and might just double toggle it anyway when I've got an issue because I can't be 100% sure what a pause button means.
The physical precedent would be to show the behaviour as the button image (play) and then the depressed/undepressed visual state would show if the behaviour was active or not. Software designers didn't follow this and invented swapping between the play/pause icons causing this new confusion. Not for any user friendly reason, more because skeuomorphic 3d buttons went out of fashion.
> It's also (usually) obvious
The only virtue of indicating the state at all is for when you have a problem. Very common for audio at least (muted sound, unplugged headphones, linux audio drivers have become borked again... sigh).
I still get that twang of cognitive dissonance when I see play/pause buttons and have to think about it and might just double toggle it anyway when I've got an issue because I can't be 100% sure what a pause button means.