A VALIDATION CASE STUDY IN AFFORDANCE BASED DESIGN (original) (raw)

In previous work the authors have explored various issues associated with the broad application of the idea of affordance to engineering design. Building on an extensive investigation of the theoretical basis for the application of affordance to design, the authors recently introduced several practical methods for using affordances in design. As with any new design method, the validity of affordance based methods is of course questionable until their efficacy has been satisfactorily shown. Building on recent work by other members of the design community, the authors have adopted a general validation strategy focused on the implementation of case studies of past documented industry design projects. Accordingly, in this paper, we explain the validation methodology implemented, and then present one case study in affordance based design: the design of the Oxo Good Grips Bottle Stopper/Opener. Key insights explained in this paper include 1) the notion of differentiating between example problems and case studies, and 2) the outputs to be expected from the execution of a design case study: namely the building of confidence in the method, advantages and disadvantages over extant methods, and feedback into the method itself.