Draft 1

From DigitalRhetoricCollaborative

Revision as of 21:48, 20 April 2015

An affordance is the qualities or properties of an object that allow it to be put into use or action. ^[1] The origin of word comes from the field of psychology and their effort to understand the relationship animals (human beings) and human interaction have with other organisms and environments. Over time, with the help of James Gibson, Don Norman and Janet Murray, the term has evolved to be related to Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to described possible actions between humans and computers, digital text and media.

James J. Gibson (Action Possibilities)

Psychologists James J. Gibson developed a theory called “The Theory of Affordances” in 1977. In it he explores the idea that affordances are possibilities for action and that the human population perceives the world not only in object shapes and spatial relationships, but in affordances or action possibilities.^[2] He supports the idea that affordances act as clues or possibilities in the environment in relation to the action capabilities of and actor. His idea is that even though affordances are independent of the actor’s experience, knowledge, culture or ability to perceive, the affordances incite ones to take action. He feels that either affordances exsit or they do not because the existence is binary. For example, Gibson’s understanding is that stairs are an affordance in that they allow for the opportunity to travel a steep incline or door knobs provide the opportunity to open doors.

Donald Norman (Perceived Action Possibilities)

Don Norman, director of The Design Lab at University of California, states in his book, The Design of Everyday Things, his idea on what affordances are. He states that affordances are the perceived and actual properties of an object that determine how it could possibly be used. ^[3] For example his idea states that if an actor is presented with a tennis ball and a chair, he could sit on the ball and throw the chair. However, the actual properties of the objects such as their physical shape and material, combined with the perceived properties of picking up the ball and leaving the chair stationary, affordances are formed as a relationship between the two to pickup and throw the ball and sit on the chair. In his reasoning he states that affordances can be dependent on the experience, knowledge or culture of the one using object as they can make an action difficult or easy. This could lead to misunderstandings because of the ambiguous idea of individual perceiving of affordances. Norman proposed that there were degrees of perceiving affordances and it lead to differing types.

False Affordances

False affordances occur when there is no action possibility but the information presents itself with the object perceives there is.^[4] For example, a chair made of cardboard is perceived to be a chair because of it’s shape and physical properties, but it is not suitable for its purpose which is to be sat on.

Hidden affordances occur when there are possibilities for action, but the person does not directly perceive them.^[5] An example of this is a link in a document that is not highlight. It can direct a person to a website, but it looks like a regular type misleading the person.

Correct Rejection occurs when there is no present affordance and there is nothing to detect one. ^[6]