Seminar one: affordances and a difficult door
Affordances, to me, have always been socially accepted physical clues that are given by objects or icons in order to help people interact with them. As someone who was introduced to the world of design through interface design, this very much made sense in my line of work, and as a result, Don Norman’s definition felt intuitive.
However, what struck me the most through Gibson’s text was how much wider the impact of affordances could go. From describing our utilitarian relationship with the environment, to the way we are socialized and culture is created by observing each other’s actions.
Sure, the two definitions are quite different, but there are some cross overs in the way we can understand affordances by pulling some of the key commonalities out. First, they will always be related to visibility. It is through observation (or inability to observe something) that the viewer interprets a situation or object. This works for Norman’s object based definition and Gibson’s environmental/behavioral based definition as you need to see in order to perceive.
To perceive them is to perceive what they afford — Gibson
Second, affordances exist in the environment around us. For Norman, knowledge is in the physical environment that provides context for the way that we interpret affordances. Gibson expands this and argues that the environment provides all the information and transactions available and considers the dynamics between actors in the environment as well. Finally, both Norman and Gibson see affordances as being both objective and subjective. Objectivity for Norman lies in the physical and logical constraints of the object being studied while the subjective elements come from the cultural interpretation that an individual overlays based on prior experience or knowledge. Gibson, sees objectivity as being based on the utility that something will provide (e.g. sustenance) but that the way it is able to be utilized is relative to the ‘animal’ and will be perceived differently (e.g. chocolate being delicious for humans but harmful for dogs).
Our task this week was to describe a single affordance and I will attempt to do so using some of the commonalities in Norman and Gibson’s definitions of affordances. I will be analyzing the affordances of my front door. Doors fascinate me as they are so widely accessible and yet we still have not figured out the best design that will work in all circumstances.

The door itself could afford a many number of things:
- Security
- Privacy
- Ownership
- Physical boundaries
- Shelter (for example, from the rain today)
- Entry to a home
Looking at the door, its functionality looks simple enough as I am only being shown the necessary features that I need to interact with as a user. Based on what I can see, there is only one way to open the door as there is only one keyhole. Further, since the keyhole is on the left hand side, I am made aware that the door will swing open from the left. This is supported by the slightly visible hinges on the right hand side, confirming that the door will not open from there.


When we move to the handle, it gets a little more complicated. This is a novel object to me as I have never interacted with this type of handle before. Usually, the handle curved outward would indicate to me that this door needed to be pulled towards me. However, it has a small lever close to it which would suggest that this won’t function the same way and also the physical constraint of the door frame not allowing the door to move in my direction. Based solely on the affordance of the handle, this is a misrepresentation of its capabilities. However, the context of the other door features aids interpretation.
When I approached the door for the first time upon moving in, I learnt by perceiving the behavior of others interacting with the door. There were a couple of insights. First, the lock is difficult to unlock (mild panic ensues the first time this happens). I watched people jerking the key back and forth in the lock increasingly quickly as the panic grew, receiving physical feedback from the door through their inability to completely turn the lock. The key is also small, so there is limited capacity to use the full capabilities of hands and fingers in this action. Next, the lever under the lock must be pushed down in order to open the door. People naturally placed their thumb over the lever and weaved the rest of their fingers through the handle to achieve this. Although I would not have found this intuitively myself, I took on this same method as it seemed to work successfully in line with the physical constraints of the lever and handle. Finally, there needs to be some additional force in the final step of opening the door. There is a definitive shove that needs to occur (and a creak from the door as it complains) in order to actually get in.
While physical affordances can help when dealing with objects, we can see that the initial perceived difficulty of opening the door was misrepresented. I did not get the full set of information solely from what I could see. It was through interaction with the door and human observation that I was able to understand the full picture, showing the benefits of combining the concepts of both Norman and Gibson in analysis.
