Affordance in interaction (original) (raw)

Affordances: Clarifying and evolving a concept

2000

The concept of affordance is popular in the HCI community but not well understood. Donald Norman appropriated the concept of affordances from James J. Gibson for the design of common objects and both implicitly and explicitly adjusted the meaning given by Gibson. There was, however, ambiguity in Norman's original definition and use of affordances which he has subsequently made efforts to clarify. His definition germinated quickly and through a review of the HCI literature we show that this ambiguity has lead to widely varying uses of the concept. Norman has recently acknowledged the ambiguity, however, important clarifications remain. Using affordances as a basis, we elucidate the role of the designer and the distinction between usefulness and usability. We expand Gibson's definition into a framework for design.

The use and misuse of the concept of affordance

6th International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition (DCC'14)

Given the lack of agreement on the phenomenological elements of affordance, it is difficult to conduct empirical research to test systematic observations across contexts (e.g., industrial design and interaction design). To address this problem, this paper aims to establish a new understanding of the concept of affordance and its key concepts. Through a critical review of influential articles about affordance, the article identifies some uses and misuses of the concept. Then, a definition of affordance is provided, which delineates its foundational elements. Based on the definition, the article proposes a framework to explain how artefacts acquire affordances through the intentional behaviour of designers, certain material features, and contextual constructions. As a result, this research will contribute a new perspective on affordances that may help designers have predictable control over them when designing end-consumer products.

Affordances for interaction: the social is material for design

Psychology, 1996

In this article, I explore an ecological approach to social interaction, using the concept of affordances to describe material properties of the environment that affect how people interact. My examples come mainly from the design of technologies that support collaboration. The physical properties of paper and electronic media-for instance electronic mail or video communication system-affects how they can be used and how people can use them to interact. Many of these effects are due to differences in the degree to which the media afford prediction and exploration. Because they are based on material properties, these affordances run deep, and trying to design against their grain is not easy. Difficulties of design, however, can shed light on subtleties of interaction that might otherwise be overlooked. Thus design is both guided by, and can guide, an ecological approach to social interaction. Nonetheless, design is only one example of the wide range of issues an ecological approach to social behaviour might address. Such an approach may provide as fundamental a challenge to existing perspectives on social interaction as it has to traditional theories of perception.

The Concept of Affordances in Digital Media

This chapter outlines the origins and meaning of the concept of affordances, presents some examples, and discusses its relevance to studies of digital media. It suggests that the uniquely socially malleable nature of digital media, the variety of uses they engender, and the simultaneous awareness of the limitations of the mediated interaction that they allow explain the increased use of affordances in analyses of digital media.

The relation between interaction aesthetics and affordances

Even though aesthetics and affordances are two important factors based on which designers provide effective ways of interaction through their artifacts, there is no study or theoretical model that relates these two aspects of design. We suggest a theoretical explanation that relates the underlying functionality of aesthetics, in particular, of interaction aesthetics and of affordances in the design process. Our claim is that interaction aesthetics are one among other factors that allow users to enhance the detection of action possibilities and consequently, the detection of affordances. Our aim is first to discuss the role of interaction aesthetics in the design process, and second to suggest an explanation for their role in the detection of affordances when users interact with artifacts.

A Review of Affordances and Affordance-Based Design to Address Usability

Proceedings of the ... International Conference on Engineering Design, 2019

Maier and Fadel pioneered Affordance-Based Design (ABD) based on Gibson's revolutionary theory of affordances and Norman's deployment of the concept in his book, "The Design of Everyday Things". Gibson (1979) introduced the affordance concept into the discipline of Ecological Psychology to address the interactions between an object and an agent. The Ecological approach includes the direct perception of affordances for the user along with a consideration of the users' biomechanics. However, as the concept of affordance was imported and utilized in different disciplines, including engineering design, some important aspects of Ecological theory were omitted. This paper is an attempt to review the definitions and different utilizations of the affordance concept focusing on the design of usable products to identify the different views and the missing elements. After addressing the divergent viewpoints of affordances, we provide recommendations to improve the usability aspects in ABD by considering direct perception and ergonomics. We claim that a design (based on affordances) that fails to address both criteria may result in a product that is less usable.