Web PedagogiesWeek 4: Theory of Affordances

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Schedule

• Review of last week• Affordances articles (group work)

– Gibson– Norman

– Torenliet– Gaver

• BREAK • Practise Lens and Learning Communities essay• Rubrics (revised version to include structuration theory)

Getting feedback

• Class has been broken into groups– Catalina: laserna@fas.harvard.edu– Trisha: pcraig@fas.harvard.edu– Alireza: alireza@doostdar.com– Sam:

Introduction to the Readings

• What is the problem?

• What are the approaches?– Key examples– Key concepts

Reading 1Gibson’s Theory: Value and Meaning in things is directly

perceived• Affordances: how do we measure these?

• Surfaces

• Objects afford manipulation

• Other animals afford inter-actions

Claim: A niche is a set of Affordances

• An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps use understand its inadequacy” (p. 129)

• Different from “subjective” because the organism depends on the environment, but the environment does not depend on the organism

• Humans can alter the natural environment to change what it affords us

Affordances of Terrestial Environment

• The medium- air afford breathing• The substances- water affords drinking,

pouring, Clay affords molding, especially for organism with hands

• Surfaces and their layout• Objects: detached and attached• Other persons and animals• Places and hiding places

Objects have dynamic relationship with the Self

Mailbox Example

“The awareness of the world and one’s complementary

relationships are not separable”

Misinformation for Affordances

Sheet of glass, a smile

Each thing says what it is, but it may lie

Reading II.Perceived Affordances (Norman) • A place for everything and everything in

it’s places

-- the case of the Wooton patent desk

-- the Filing cabinet: why revolutionary?

• Organizing one’s work space: tools and processes

Organizing Knowledge

• Alphabetic versus Functional organizations

• The case of the Hardware Store

• Computer’s capacity to search revolutionizes our “cognitive tools”

• Affordances of an “the electronic library”

Reading III: What is lost? G.Torenliet

Defined Affordances as“The perceived and actual properties of the

thing. Primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could properly be used”

The psychology of Everyday Things Reduced to “purely cognitive” looses

connection to the actual environment

So What?

This definition separates usability studies from ecological psychology

If people use it in different ways and confusion spreads

Gibson: Don’t ask if something looks like a door, but instead should a door be there?

(p17) Suggestion: Come up with a different term

Affordances Teaching and Research

• http://www.mie.utoronto.ca/

IV Gaver Reading Affordances in Interfase design

• Complementarity of Action

• Inter-referntiality vs need for mediational representation

• Nested Affordances

Dynamic Affordances (Cook and Brown)

• For human groups, the source of new knowledge and knowing lies in the use of knowledge as a tool of knowing within situated interaction with the social and physical world. It is this that we call the generative dance

• Focus on his examples riding a bicycle, flutemakers, paper handling

Group Report

– Gibson

– Norman

– Torenliet– Gaver

The Affordance Lense in E-104 projects-

Challenge

(Describe)

Propose

Solution

Web Affordance? (Explain)

BREAK

Three examples

• Distribute write up

• Distribute Rubrics

Students read each memo

Group discussion

• What questions might you ask the writer?

• What are the strengths of the approach

• What analytical gaps do you perceive?

• What recommendations would you make

Next Week’s Pre-view

• Online research

• Writing

• Intro to TFU

• Lab- CCDT part 2