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A Review of Affordances and Affordance-Based Design to Address Usability

Part of: Design Methods and Tools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Nafiseh Masoudi ,
Georges M. Fadel ,
Christopher C. Pagano  and
Maria Vittoria Elena
Nafiseh Masoudi*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, US;
Georges M. Fadel
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, US;
Christopher C. Pagano
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Clemson University, US
Maria Vittoria Elena
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, US;
*
Contact: Masoudi, Nafiseh, Clemson University, Mechanical Engineering, United States of America, nmasoud@clemson.edu

Abstract

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Maier and Fadel pioneered Affordance-Based Design (ABD) based on Gibson's revolutionary theory of affordances and Norman's deployment of the concept in his book, “The Design of Everyday Things”. Gibson (1979) introduced the affordance concept into the discipline of Ecological Psychology to address the interactions between an object and an agent. The Ecological approach includes the direct perception of affordances for the user along with a consideration of the users’ biomechanics. However, as the concept of affordance was imported and utilized in different disciplines, including engineering design, some important aspects of Ecological theory were omitted.

This paper is an attempt to review the definitions and different utilizations of the affordance concept focusing on the design of usable products to identify the different views and the missing elements. After addressing the divergent viewpoints of affordances, we provide recommendations to improve the usability aspects in ABD by considering direct perception and ergonomics. We claim that a design (based on affordances) that fails to address both criteria may result in a product that is less usable.

Keywords

User centred designHuman behaviour in designAffordance based methodsDesign cognitionAffordances
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , July 2019 , pp. 1353 - 1362
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

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