Abstract
The concept of affordance has different interpretations in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). However, its treatment has been merely as a one-to-one relationship between a user and a technology. We believe that a broader view of affordances is needed which encompasses social and cultural aspects of our everyday life. We propose an interaction-centered view of affordance that can be useful for developing better understandings of designed artefacts. An interaction-centered view of affordance suggests that affordance is an interpretative relationship between users and the technology that emerges during the users’ interaction with the technology in the lived environments. We distinguish two broad classes of affordances: affordance in Information and affordance in Articulation. Affordance in information refers to users’ understanding of a technology based on their semantic and syntactic interpretation; and affordance in articulation refers to users’ interpretations about the use of the technology. We also argue that the notion of affordance should be treated at two levels: at the ‘artefact level’ and at the ‘practice level’. Consequently, we provide two examples to demonstrate our arguments.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | 13th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics |
Editors | Antonio Rizzo, Gudela Grote, William Wong |
Place of Publication | New York |
Publisher | ACM Press |
Pages | 92-99 |
Number of pages | 8 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-3-906509-23-5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 19 Sep 2006 |
Event | 13th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, ECCE 2006 - Zurich, Switzerland Duration: 20 Sep 2006 → 22 Sep 2006 Conference number: 13 |
Publication series
Name | ACM International Conference Proceeding Series |
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Publisher | ACM Press |
Conference
Conference | 13th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, ECCE 2006 |
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Abbreviated title | ECCE |
Country/Territory | Switzerland |
City | Zurich |
Period | 20/09/06 → 22/09/06 |
Keywords
- HMI-HF: Human Factors
- Affordance
- HCI
- Interpretations & meanings
- Structuration theory
- Technology-in-practice