Development, Usability, and Experience

Human Computer Intuition

September 25th, 2009 6:54 am —  29 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.

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  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 [↩]

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