It’s time for a review. As times and technologies change, as we have moved from individual to group, social, and even cultural computing, and as communication technologies have become as important as computational ones, how well have our design principles kept up?
One of our fundamental principles is that of perceived affordances: how we know what to do in novel situations. That’s fine for objects, but what about situations? What about people, social groups, cultures? The answer is the same, yet different. Yes, there are still perceived affordances, constraints, and conceptual models, but there’s more. There are trails. There are behaviors. We know how to behave by watching the behavior of others, or if others are not there, by the trails they have left behind. As we move from the world of stand-alone objects to social structures, complex, intelligent products, and a heavy dominance of services, then new principles are needed…
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[…] is a great resource for web usability. I want to summarize Norman’s recent opinion piece Signifiers, not Affordances in ACM interactions publication and offer some commentary (he has posted the entire Signifiers, not […]
[…] Norman: signifiers, not affordances December 23, 2008 via: interactions magazine Signifiers, Not AffordancesDon […]
I have just finished reading Donald Norman’s bestselling classic design book: The Design of Everyday Things (also known as The Psychology of Every Day Things). In this book Don Norman investigates the concept of affordances that was originally introduced by J.J. Gibson. Affordances refers to the possibilities for actions that are provided by any given object. For example, a seat affords the possibility of sitting.
In this article Don explores how the concept of affordances is focused exclusively on the possibilities provided by objects. Therefore, it is rather limited when you consider that it does not take into account the possibilities for action that are provided by people, social groups, and cultures. These entities are not objects and cannot be said to offer affordances, though they do heavily influence the possibility for actions available to people who inhabit, or interact with, these social groups or cultures.
That is where the concept of “signifiers” comes in. “A Signifier is some sort of indicator, some signal in the physical or social world that can be interpreted meaningfully. Signifiers indicate critical information, even if the signifier itself is an accidental byproduct of the world.” The concept of affordance is essentially a type of “signifier” - on that is specifically associated to an object.
[…] “Design of Everyday Things.” I got on this kick because I was annoyed at Norman’s article in the latest Interactions: in discussing “social signals” (indicators of status left by human activity–for […]