Third Lecture: Affordance

Customer is the one will buy the products from the seller, so it is important to have customer for anyone who selling the product. Especially the bigger companies and industries, they need constant customer to support their own company or industry. And that's how it makes the customer's need become priority.

              Customer now are very intelligent and picky, they do not same like old time. They are more picky and have better expectation than the old time before. In the old time, most of the people doesn't care about what the product is made or either should they buy it. They will just buy it as long as they will use it. But now, customer request for more better quality of the product that could satisfy their needs. Customer's need are priority, and they are a King right now, every seller have to make something that could satisfy their needs and expectation only they will buy it, they are always right and never bargains. Every company have to follow the needs of the customer to make the product that would satisfy their need, this has made that many products has produced in better quality and could fulfill customer needs.

              Affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action. According to the psychologist J.J. Gibson, affordance refers to the qualities of the physical  world that suggest the possibily of interaction relative to the ability of an actor (person or animal) to interact.The term has further evolved for use in the context of HCI as indicating the easy discoverability of possible actions (from wikipedia).

              For example, people will turning a knob, sitting on chair, hold pencil, turn switched so others. These are the normal reaction when a person was react or interact with certain item. It is happening unconsciously, people will automatically turning a knob but not hitting it, sitting on a chair but not turning it and holding a pencil but not to sit on it.

Isn't it will be weird when you are thinking to sit on a bomb?

              

               Affordance is example like a branch, the affordance of branch as "a nice place to sit" depends on the quality and material made of the branch and the capability of the actor. The point of affordance is have different design but still can function normally when a person or actor was interacting with it, which is the actor can still know how to use a product even there is no any instruction given or guide. Just like door knob, originally people use round door knob to turn it to open the door. But someone change it into a handle, but people still know how to react with the handle and open the door and it has make some people who might have difficulty to use it more easily. So, that is a good example of Affordance. Other than door knob, there is others object have good affordance design too.

Handle type 

Door Knob

Even there is different type of electric switches, but we still know how to interact with it in proper way.
This is a good affordance design which can satisfy the customer on design and 
do not change the goal of the actor change. 

              Besides the Affordance, there is a perceived affordance. It refers to perceived properties of the object that suggest you how to use it. They suggesting to customer how to use their product properly. The Perceived Affordance consist of 4 elements which is context, culture, instinct and mental models. 

              Lastly, why must we have affordances in design? This is because it helps to guide the user how to use your product and do not make your customer frustrated when they are confusing on using your product. When the things can explain itself, it has a good affordance. The most important is persuasive technologies, persuading the user to buy your product. You must have a good persuasion to attract your customer to buy your product in the design. A good affordance of product could have a good persuasion on customer, because it gives the reason for a customer to buy them.

by: Yee Kuang Hooi
Hiccarus Lesslion. 1102702258