Affordances and Apple

Affordances-

         Very rarely has one term been embraced by so many and redefined by almost every discipline that uses it. The concept of affordance is very important in all areas of design- whether it is design for a computer interface, design of a commercial building, or the design of a writing course. These areas often use the term affordance with different meanings, but underlying it all (in my humble opinion) the basic concept of affordance is essential to successful design of everything. To me it is much like Einstein's Unified Theory, there should be some basic principle that holds everything together in successful design. However, like the Unified Theory- it should be there, but somehow it hasn't been found yet. Even though Norman's interpretation of Affordance is quite different from Gibson's, they both have important elements of truth that shouldn't be overlooked. And because of their importance I wanted to offer a few more thoughts on the subject, even though our major focus on this topic was last week- it should be in the back of our mind in all the technological choices we make.

      In Donald Norman's article, “Affordances and Design”,  the goal of the educator- their affordance- should be apparent to the student (or user). If the affordance of the activity is to encourage interactivity among students with a group writing assignment, then the tool that is chosen to accomplish this task should not only really do the task, it should be apparent that this is the way the task should be accomplished. This is especially important for educators preparing the environment for our students. The technologies we use should facilitate the learning and not offer barriers and frustrations that are not necessary to the learning process.

Norman's guidelines-

1. Follow conventional usage, both in the choice of images and the allowable interactions
2. Use words to describe the desired actions
3. Use Metaphor
4. Follow a coherent conceptual model so that once part of the interface is learned, the same principles apply to the other parts.

      The tools that we use to accomplish our goals should be following a “coherent conceptual model” to make sure that our real goals are met. Unified interface helps tremendously in allowing the student to focus on the learning task and not be distracted by simply struggling with the interface.

         This philosophy of User Interface was fully embraced by Apple in their products. Their philosophy is that users should be able to accomplish their task in a way where they don't really feel like they are interacting with a computer, it should flow intuitively. For many years I was a whole hearted Windows person. I programmed with Windows products, I understood what was happening in my computer, but it took years of serious study to get to the point where I could load a program and be able to find out what was happening when the computer got slow, needed to be reformatted, or just needed to be taken apart to fix. Finally I tried a Mac because we had to use it for my computer graphics class, it was amazing. Within a few minutes I was able to figure out the interface and adjust. Drawing with it was so smooth, and the user interface responded effortlessly to me. After my new Windows laptop broke down three times in the first year I had it, I started getting all Apple products (along with the rest of the world). I grew to really love the ease with which I could accomplish my tasks.

       As we choose technology and design interface- it should DO what we want it to do, and it should be intuitive in usability. As with any writing project, I always ask my students- WHO is the audience. If we don't write in a way that speaks to the audience, then we need to rewrite. If we design and choose technologies that the students can''t understand or use, then we need to redesign and rethink our choices. Each item we choose should make sense and be accessible for the users. Learning a new way to do things will always be resisted, unless the user sees a benefit in learning this new task.

This adds a new layer to get to our affordance, we need to convince the user that it is worth the effort to learn how to use this tool to get the goal accomplished. This is where metaphors and storytelling can help people adapt to new technologies. Much like the Apple iPad ads- “This is what we believe. Technology alone is not enough.  Faster, thinner, lighter -- those are all good things.  But when technology gets out of the everything becomes more delightful, even magical.  That's when you leap forward.  That's when you end up with something like this." (Apple, 2011, iPad2 commercial).

Hopefully we can get to that point, where our classes become "delightful, even magical".