Week 4 / Third Lecture: Understanding and conceptualising interaction [WeeFong]

An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action. For example, a knob affords twisting, and perhaps pushing, while a cord affords pulling. It is something that makes one choose the object over a certain reason or purposes.

"The Customer is King"

The Picture about show that the customer is always right. Why the customer is always right? The tricky thing with customers is that there comes a time where you have to decide if you want the future business of the customer or not. Some business have no interest in the future business of any of their customers, and treat them all like dirt. On the other end of the spectrum you have small businesses going almost belly up because they accept any and all behavior of the big factory uptown which is responsible for 80% of their business. And you have supermarket managers telling customers on a daily basis not to come back to the store. But then again, 'customer' may not be a good name for a shoplifter.                                  

                                                   Source: http://www.customerservicepoint.com/the-customer-is-always-right.html

Properties of Affordance

•  It exists relative to the action capabilities of a particular actor and its existence is depending on actor's ability to perceive it.

• refers to the perceived properties of that subject that suggested how we the user could use it.

• element of perceived: Context-where, Culture-society, Instince-unconscious and Mental model-expectation.

Element of Perceived Affordance

• Context - Where (the environment or process in which the element is displayed)
• Culture - Society (the influence of societal ‘norms’ on the individual’s understanding and use of a object)
• Instinct - Unconscious act (an unconscious association, often linked to phsical characteristics, for example, the size of an object in relation to the human form)
• Mental Models - Expectations (the user’s understanding and expectations of interaction with the object)

Affordance is GUI

A graphical user interface allows a user to interact with a computer without entering code. The combination of an input device (such as a mouse or stylus) and visual representations of the workspace and tasks, the user is able to interact with the computer in a manner similar to the physical manipulations available in the real world.                                           
                                                                                                     Source: http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/gui.php

• Important concept
• Buttons in 3D shapes appear to "sticks out" and afford pushing
• Sliders and scroll bars afford pushing

Point of Affordance

When it's taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking at it; no picture, label or instruction needed.

Forcing Functions

1. Lock-In: A system arranged such that the process is kept active
2. Lock-Out: May be implemented as extra step
3. Interlock: Combines elements of lock-in and lock-out, most common forcing function mechanism, the   ability to use a function depends in another running/being started or some other condition being fulfilled.

In conclusion, affordance theory states that the world is perceived not only in terms of object shapes and spatial relationships but also in terms of object possibilities for action (affordances) — perception drives action