Reflection. Week 3

In today’s session of Design and the Human Condition we discussed a name I’ve heard before but never bothered researching about him; Donald Arthur Norman. Don Norman is an American professor and a very well known researcher. He’s an author of a collection of books but a fact that intrigued me while researching about him is his definition of “Affordance,” and the fact he introduced the design community with the concept in affordance in 1988. Affordance was the main topic of discussion today.
Affordance is the perceivable properties of a thing, which is not limited to interface, object, or a thing but also the audience and the consumer. Don Norman defines the concept by relating affordance to properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent. He says this is how you know the possibilities of how the object can be used. An example that helped me understand this concept is a door. A door affords to open and this is the property of the object, and a person’s arms and legs are to be considered as the capability of the agent; because you can’t possibly open a door without physical interaction unless there’s an interface that recognizes your presence and automatically slides the door open for you like at the mall. So basically a physical normal day to day door might have weak affordance considering you’ll have to rotate the doorknob and understand the push and pull concept but an automatic door at the mall has strong affordance as you just have to stand upfront and it’ll open on its own.
Research is a very important part of the design, one needs to understand its consumer and how they’ll perceive and interact with the design. This where we were introduced to different types of affordances. Perceived Affordance is the characteristics of the object and the actions the user perceives as being possible based on it. Applications and games on the smartphones are perceived affordances, they’re virtual and intangible interfaces. The obvious properties of the flat screen prompt users to use the affordance by swiping, sliding, or tapping the screen, it’s not real. Your interaction with the screen results in virtual action/reaction.
Hidden affordance is yet another concept you witness in your everyday life and one should be smart and careful about it when working on interactive design. Hidden affordance is when affordance is not obvious in a user interface or an object. This is when the consumer of the design relies on user experience and trial and error method to determine the possibilities of how the object can be used. An example of hidden affordance is a mechanical pencil, you’ve got to remove the cap and eraser to refill the lead. The removable eraser gives us the idea of refilling eraser but the idea of filling the pencil with lead is still hidden. Virtually, drop-down menus are considered hidden affordance as a user needs to click to find out the information.
Similarly, false affordance is a concept where an object has unexpected characteristics, this suggests the consumer to do something that isn’t possible. A great example of false affordance is an old telephone on the table in my living room. The wire connection and the whole look of the phone give an illusion of a functional phone but the fact it doesn’t work makes it a false affordance. Broken links are another example of false affordances. This is why research and presence of mind is important when it comes to designing an interface.