Week 4 - Affordance

Affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment which allows an individual to perform an action.
And this is my own explaination : Affordance is how great or how strong the object or an environment that can be used or performed action by a person or an individual.

Affordance (perceptual psychology)

Affordance is a term created by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson to refer to the qualities of the physical world that suggest the possibility of interaction relative to the ability of an actor (person or animal) to interact. McGrenere and Ho presented three fundamental properties of an affordance as defined by Gibson:

1. An affordance exists relative to the action capabilities of a particular actor.
2. The existence of an affordance is independent of the actor’s ability to perceive it (emphasis added).
3. An affordance does not change as the needs and goals of the actor change. [2]

- http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/perceived-affordance.php

The affordance of an object depends on 
a. The quality of an object
b. The capabilities of an object
c. How the consumer understand about the object

The very important about the affordance of an object is when the object can explain itself and the people will understand about the use easily.


Question in the class : 
How do affordances apply to robotics?
How does a robot know what to do with a ball?
- Detection using the shape of the ball
- Detecting the measurement of the size of a circle

Perceived affordance
Refers to the perceived properties of the object that suggest how you / the user could use it.
And this is my own explaination : Perceived affordance is how the user perceive / imagine the object to do / function.


Elements of Perceived affordance : 
1. Context (where)
2. Culture (society)
3. Instinct (unconcious)
4. Mental models (expectations)

Forcing functions : 
- Interlock
- Lock-in
- Lock-out


Summary : 
1. All design is pursuasive
2. Profitable to the client = profitable to the user
3. Brainwashing to let the people to buy
4. The design is understandable easily
5. The most important things is fullfilling users' needs

Thanks.