The Moonlighting Student

Human Computer Intuition

September 25th, 2009 6:54 am —  24 views

Two years ago, an inspiring professor1 taught me about affordances.

Prior to taking his course on interface and interaction design, I understood that the design of something could make it more or less usable. What I didn’t know was a way to articulate what it was about design strategies that make an interface easier to use.

An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action2. When he taught us this word and it’s meaning, a word I hadn’t heard it before, a fire of understanding was kindled in my brain.

Like this post you’re reading. It’s an object. What you can do with it depends on what you’re interacting with to reach it. Since I’m using Wordpress and am the administrator, I am afforded all kinds of actions. The most noticeable one being that I can arrange the words you’re reading.

What’s funny is that Firefox is underlining with a dotted red line “affordance” and “affordances” in this editor window. The dictionary used for spell check doesn’t know the word yet. Right-clicking on the word followed by a left-click on “Add to Dictionary” and I’ve now schooled my computer on affordances. Thank you designers of Firefox for affording me this option.

I’m learning the importance of being able to articulate in a meaningful way what it is about an object, a program, a web application, a piece of electronics, that more effectively enables a person to perform an action. When we’re able to name or describe methods of interaction and catalog how people actually use things, we can build more intuitive objects and interfaces.

I’m beginning to understand in a deeper way how the field of human-computer interaction is interested in quantifying what most us already know intuitively about what works and what doesn’t.

I’m realizing what I’ve always known was my goal: To improve user experience.

Image: This is my laptop in a student meeting room preparing for a presentation on how we’re influenced by color.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  1. Mick McQuaid, University of Michigan School of Information. Don’t let the style of his site fool you. [↩]
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordances [↩]

Related Posts

Comment 

Fall Semester begins

September 14th, 2009 7:41 am —  9 views

Fall classes began last week. The next 15 weeks see me subjecting my mind to all kinds of calisthenics in the areas of graphic design and database application design. Like every class over the last 3 years, what I’m studying and what I’m actually doing as a web developer working for a software and services corporation, strongly overlap.

Admittedly though, some of the classes I’ve had were ahead of their time. I could still see the potential. Social networking, online communities, social systems and collections, collaborative systems…things happening in the public sector. Look at Facebook, Twitter, or any other web community whose interest comes from it’s users.

I’m running late for work, though I’ve been up for 3 hours. I needed to continue researching how color influences us. I volunteered to present this week with two classmates. We’ve scheduled a meeting for this evening to talk about what we’ve learned and to start organizing our presentation. We have 10-15 minutes to interest our classmates.

School is on again.

Image: Here I am in a familiar alley on my way to campus.

Related Posts

1 Comment