In week 4, lecturer teach us about affordance. From Wikipedia, an affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action. According to Norman (1988) an affordance is the design aspect of an object which suggest how the object should be used; a visual clue to its function and use.
Affordance Examples from Norman:
- Plates (on doors) are for pushing.
- Knobs are for turning.
- Slots are for inserting things into.
- Balls are for throwing or bouncing.
“When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking; no picture, label, or instruction needed.”
Nowadays there are a lot of design with intent means designing specific affordances and constraints to guide users. For example using forcing function- design a system so that the right behaviour must occur before the user can take the next step.
There are three types of forcing function: lock in, lock out and interlock.
Lock in: User cannot exit an operation until a certain condition is met.
Lock out: Makes starting some operations difficult.
Interlock: Combines elements of lock-ins and lock-outs.
Reference:
Lecturer's notes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15494-s08/lectures/affordances.pdf
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