Affordances: Commentary on the Special Issue of AI EDAM

Abstract

Don Norman Affordances-for AI EDAM special issue Sep 7, 2014 A FFORDANCES : C OMMENTARY ON THE S PECIAL I SSUE OF AIEDAM D ONALD A. N ORMAN 1 The concept of affordances has an interesting history, starting with the keen observations and thoughts of the perceptual psychologist, J.J. Gibson in the late 1970s, moving into the world of design through the 1988 publication of my book “Design of Everyday Things” (later originally titled “Psychology of Everyday Things”), and then making its way into engineering design in the 2001 paper by Maier & Fadel. As a result of this disciplinary migration, the concept of affordance leads several rather separate lives within these different fields -- ecological psychology, Design, and engineering design -- with each field barely aware of the work being done in the others. Those who use the concept in ecological psychology and philosophy seem unaware of its use in design and engineering. Similarly, those in design are mostly unaware of its use in engineering. And those in engineering and design are unaware of the work that has continued on the concept since its introduction into their own domains. Disciplinary silos still exist. See, for example, the detailed analysis by Dotov, Nie, and de Wit, 2012, and the one by Chimero, 2003, both of which ignore the work outside of perceptual and ecological psychology, even though both claim to be broad, comprehensive reviews. Gibson would be puzzled, delighted, and dismayed. Me too: I am delighted and somewhat puzzled, but I replace dismay with amusement. A word of caution is needed here about my use of the terms “engineering,” “engineering design,” and “Design.” In the design and manufacture of a product or service, many different disciplines play a role. Moreover, even with a single discipline, there are many sub- disciplines, sometimes with competing approaches. Thus, I speak of engineering design as if it were a single, cohesive approach, but this is not the case. First, engineering is itself divided into numerous disciplines, often with very little in common (and each discipline has many subdisciplines.) Second, every discipline of engineering includes design. Thus, semiconductor design is a legitimate design discipline with very little in common with product design as practiced within mechanical engineering departments. And product design within mechanical engineering has its own differing philosophies and methods. In this article I comment primarily on the design of products. Within engineering most of this work can be found in mechanical engineering, computer science, and industrial engineering. Most, but not all. In this essay I use the term “engineering” to reflect the more formal, rigorous 1 Contribution for the special issue on “Affordances in Engineering Design” for the journal “Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing (Cambridge University Press). Publication date: sometime in 2015. http://aiedam.usc.edu Don Norman. don@jnd.org www.jnd.org Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial 4.0 International License. Don Norman is the Director of the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego and author of numerous books, including “Design of Everyday Things,” the book that introduced the concept of affordance into design.