Unholy waffle about affordances

[louiselux]

Was sitting here trying to understand the idea of affordances, then realised my eyes had been out of focus for entire minutes and I'd better have a break.

Affordances: things that can happen between you and the world.  I think product designers have misunderstood the idea of affordances. It got mixed up with the idea of product semantics and for designers came to mean 'percieved affordances' or, to put it another way, the object gives you clues about how to use it.  The product will embody conventions and constraints that let it be used in certain specific ways. Ie, a percieved affordance of a hammer could be that you pick it up by its nice rubbery, grippy handle. This sort of idea (ie, the material used for the handle invites you to touch it, the shape tells you where to pick it up) is very much the sort of thing that product semantics was focussed on, and I say was because interest in PS has waned and most people these days are interested in things like user experience or product values.

The real affordance of a hammer is that it extends your ability to hit things.

This is what I think so far today. I am probably wrong, but at least I reached a conclusion.

So, a product contains signs that invite you to take advantage of the real affordance. Donald Norman calls these signs affordances, thus confusing the issue. But, what he calls an affordance is really only a 'perceived affordance'. A perceived affordance isn't an affordance at all, but a sign to tell you that there's a real affordance. Real affordances are not put there by designers. It seems they are invariable and are a quality of the world.

I can't go on, it's too hard.

Comments

[weyrlady.livejournal.com]

So percieved affordances are all the little clues put there by a designer that make a product intuitive to use? Like, say, the way a plug and its socket can be color coded to match, so people know where to plug what in (I'm thinking of the back of a Dell computer, at this point). Whereas the actual affordance is that, once you plug in the wires, the computer works.

*ponders* Odd word choice, though. I'd call them something more like "intuitive signals" or some such.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

it was unholy. but on the plus side i understood what you were saying.

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

...this all sounds eerily Lacanian. Echoes of literary theory pop up in the damnedest places.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Yes - the example with the computer is right. I think it is, anyway. I'm still not 100% clear on the whole thing myself.

The reason why affordances became used by designers was really because of Donald Norman, who used the term in his book about product design, the Psychology of Everyday Things. Otherwise, I don't think deigners would necessarily have used it. 'Intuitive signals' makes more sense to me.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Cool! If you understood it, that means it makes sense. I think;-)

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I know almost nothing about Lacan, and even I can see the influences:-)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

that was my take.