This article is my response to the following five questions about design based on on the readings:
Which definition of design most resonated with you and why?
How would you define design in everyday terms to your grandma?
What is an affordance? How does it differ from a convention?
Provide an example of an object or interface that demonstrates affordance. Do you think it works? Why or why not?
Provide an example of an object or interface that could benefit from improved affordance. If you were to redesign it, what would you do first?
Readings:
Norman, D. (1999). Affordance, conventions, and design.
Gibson, J. J. (1977). The Theory of Affordances.
1. Which definition of design most resonated with you and why?
Design is “formulating an appropriate conceptual model and then assuring that everything else be consistent with it (Norman, 1990, p. 39).” This is what Donald Norman thinks the hardest part of design in his article Affordance, Conventions and Design. It indicates that good design should be intuitive and understandable, and should follow people’s conventional way of perceiving things.
2. How would you define design in everyday terms to your grandma?
Grandma, design is to make it easy to understand things’ usages, and to make things good-looking and functional.
Take your new denture as an example. When you get a set of denture from the dentist, you know from its appearance that it’s for replacing your bad teeth in your mouth. You use it to chew food effortlessly, which means that it is functional. And of course, you don’t want your denture to look like vampire’s fangs! You want it to look natural and pretty. This is what design means in our life.
3. What is an affordance? How does it differ from a convention?
Affordance is originally used to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal) (Gibson, 1977). In my understanding, affordance means that the object offers a variety of capabilities that potentially enable users to make use of them or interact with them.
According to Norman (1999), a convention is a constraint in that it prohibits some activities and encourages others (p. 41). I agree with it. Conventions are the ways that people usually do and that are most understandable to people. It differs from an affordance. For instance, the tap of the beverage dispenser is an affordance. The shape, size and location of its handle indicate that users can turn it. This is an affordance. Based on some people’s experience using similar taps in their daily life, they assume that turning the spigot handle to the right and liquid will come out. This is a convention. However, some spigots can be turned to the left or both left and right.
4. Provide an example of an object or interface that demonstrates affordance. Do you think it works? Why or why not?
This is the control panel of the heating in my dormitory in CDM. Two triangle buttons on the left and right allow users to decrease and increase the temperature. These two buttons are understandable. I think they demonstrate their affordances very well.
The affordance of the round button doesn’t work well. The button in the middle shows that it serves two functions: temperature mode and confirmation (“OK”). After using it for over eight months, I still don’t get how this “ok/ thermometer (icon)” button works – whenever I press “ok” to confirm the mode I choose, the number on the screen keeps flashing and the mode just switches to the next one, instead of confirming the mode I try to keep. Whenever I want to turn off the heating, I need to switch mode three times until I choose the “off” mode.
Neither the affordance of white oval button works. It is the button that lies under the digital screen. This button is made of silicone, just like the other three buttons. Based on observation, users can hardly tell whether it is a button or what it’s function. It turns out that this white button doesn’t have any functions.
5. Provide an example of an object or interface that could benefit from improved affordance. If you were to redesign it, what would you do first?
If I were to redesign the heating panel mentioned above, I would change the “ok/ thermometer (icon)” into “mode” – this round button in the middle solely has the function of switching modes. I would also make the white oval button as the “on/off” button.
References
Norman, D. (1999). Affordance, conventions, and design. Interactions, 6(3), 38-43. doi:10.1145/301153.301168
Gibson, J. J. “The Theory of Affordances.” In R. E. Shaw & J. Bransford (eds.), Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 1977.
© Wenyi Gong 2019
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