Affordances in design

Proceedings of the 13th …, 2006

2016

Insights: (1) perceived intended affordances refer to affordances that are intended to be perceived in a certain situation by the end user; (2) designing for usability through affordances requires designers to be aware of an object’s perceived intended affordances; (3) intended affordances can be manipulated or thwarted by the visual features of an object, and by other objects in the user’s field of view.

Design Studies, 2011

Artefacts offer opportunities for action, 'affordances', that can be described on various levels, from manipulations ('pushing a button') to social activities ('dialling a friend'). However, research in design into affordances has not investigated what an 'action' is, nor has it distinguished those levels. This paper addresses the question of which kinds of descriptions can be applied to affordances. Its main claim is that different descriptions can apply to a single affordance. On this claim a descriptionsof-affordances-model is built that shows how these levels are connected, and that specifies what knowledge the artefact user would need in order to perceive affordances under each kind of description. The paper also shows several ways in which the descriptions-of-affordances-model can contribute to affordance-based design.

1999

To my great surprise, the concept of affordance was adopted by the design community, especially graphical and industrial design. Alas, yes, the concept has caught on, but not always with complete understanding. My fault: I was really talking about perceived affordances, which are not at all the same as real ones.

Proceedings of the Design Society: 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 A...

Research in Engineering Design, 2009

After reviewing current approaches to design theory, which are based on the transformative concept of function, we argue that this basis in function limits the scope of design problems and explanatory power of current design theories. As an alternative with greater potential for explanatory power and a framework for solving a wider array of design problems, we propose that a relational theory of design is needed. Such a relational theory should mirror those currently developed in mathematics, physics, computer science, and even philosophy. We develop a relational theory for design based on the concept of affordances from perceptual psychology. Affordances help to explain the entanglement between designers, users, and artifacts—relationships that are not currently handled by function based approaches to design. Affordance based design, as developed in this paper, does not offer a radical new approach to doing design, but rather a shift in design thinking. Our focus in this paper is therefore on the explanatory power and potential innovation fostered by this change in design thinking, as illustrated through several examples, and not on specific methods.

ALT-J, 2004

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.

2019

n/a – Critical survey essay retheorising the concept of 'affordance' in digital media context. Lead article in a special issue on the topic, co-edited by the authors for the journal Media Theory

Affordances and the potential for architecture, 2020

Here is the plan. In the first section, I present the two problems I think we need to solve in order to make good on the conference title: namely, Affordances and their potential for architecture. (I also make a brief excursion into evolutionary theory.) In §2, I discuss Gibson’s notion of affordances and some of his claims about understanding the meaning of what we perceive. In §3, I discuss the notion of functions as it applies to biology and those artifact kinds we call “works of art;” and then discuss what the notion of function suggests about understanding the meanings of works of art. And, in §4, I draw some conclusions about whether our problems are tractable.