Notes for “Affordances and Design”
By Don Norman
The word “affordance” was originally invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal). To Gibson, affordances are a relationship. They are a part of nature: they do not have to be visible, known, or desirable.
Don corrected his original concept of using Affordances to “Perceived Affordance”. Because in the field of design, we care more about what user perceive a possible action as true, rather than the actual truth.
for in design, we care much more about what the user perceives than what is actually true
He gives an example of touch screen, since we can touch on a screen anytime, even when a screen is not a touch sensitive screen. It doesn’t mean that the screen doesn’t afford touch, but it is a matter of the perceived affordance:
“Does the user perceive that clicking on that location is a meaningful, useful action to perform?”.
Cultural constraints, cultural conventions
Don talks about the cultural constraints and cultural conventions distinguished from the perceived affordances.
The first thing is the logical constraints.
Logical constraints use reasoning to determine the alternatives. Thus, if we ask the user to click on 5 locations and only 4 are immediately visible; the person knows, logically, that there is still location left.
Second thing is the cultural constraints which are the learned concentions shared by a cultural group.
He thinks those are not affordances, but cultural convention.
How new users understand what to do: Four principles for screen interfaces
1. Follow conventional usage, both in the choice of images and the allowable interactions.
Understand the conventions in our physical worlds, or physical products design can inform the design conceptualisation for augmented reality.
2. Use words to describe the desired action (e.g., “click here” or use labels in front of perceived objects).
using texts or words is an easy way to achieve, but it causes problems of internationality. And sometimes it could be lengthy and overwhelming. My approach would try to avoid this method.
3. Use metaphor.
I think metaphor is an approach to take for my design concepts.
4. Follow a coherent conceptual model so that once part of the interface is learned, the same principles apply to other parts.
The conceptual model is directly related to mental models, I need to figure out the differences between two, and make an argument about it.
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