Developing Usable Experiences

Interaction affordances

March 4th, 2009 7:41 am —  17 views

Turn that door handle, step on throughNext on my list was to download and print the articles for this week’s subject from my class on managing the IT organization. I wasn’t sure if I’d already done this or not, but needed to take a peek at the forums anyway, see how many people had posted overnight.

I navigate to the Resources section of the site and download the ZIP file containing the articles to my local drive and notice there is already a folder for this week, but no ZIP files in it. So I download and navigate to open it.

And there, among all the PDF articles from the original ZIP I’d previously downloaded and exploded, is the ZIP I just downloaded.

Then I remember deleting the ZIP file after I decompressed its contents the first time. After all, why would I need it later? I had what I needed.

This morning I realized it would have been a signal. It would have afforded me awareness of something my brain wasn’t remembering. It would have reminded me that I’d already downloaded it.

When disk space is so cheap maybe it is more affordable to leave crumbs where you’d been…even if that means leaving ZIP files around.

Speaking of affordances, it was almost a year and a half ago that I took Interface and Interaction Design with Mick McQuaid where we thought critically about affordances in the design of interfaces. After embracing the idea of things being affordances, you start to see them where you didn’t see them before. Like as a reason to not delete a ZIP file.

What got me pondering that class was a recent comment the professor left on a post written here during the start of that most interesting and challenging class. It’s funny looking back. Not funny haha, but funny in that awkward way.

Image: One of a collage of pictures taken of physical things that afforded interaction. Plus I like the metaphor of doorways.

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