The lecture this week entirely focused its self towards affordances. Understanding it from the roots that affordances calls for. Affordance is something that does not just lie in the essence of the object but it is more inclined towards the aspect of what possibilities and the functioning that the object poses for the user and what an individual perceives, what possibilities and the capacity of what an object affords to do form an individual’s perspective. Falling back to the perspective from the last class, as it spoke how design can never exist in isolation, a designer designs form the perspective of the user and the kind of interaction the design would then afford hence designing in a way that it caters to a vast majority. While designing one has to keep in mind the interactions the object poses towards a user which brings us to what a design or what kinds of interactions does a design afford. Taking a simple example, from our interactions class we understood the design theory of handles that are placed on the doors. How a flat metal plate installed in place of a handle affords only a push, which poses towards a rather simple and effective design strategy rather than placing a signage for a push or a pull, because the design of such sort automatically affords only a push hence the action comes naturally. Similarly, a verticle bar placed on a door affords pulling which also derives from basic physics where the handle is placed at the maximum horizontal distance from the pivot which poses a well-designed affordance where the user has to put in the least amount of effort to figure out how one should interact or what interaction does the object afford, this also relates to the topic form last class of how a design would act as if invisible. How a good design never interferes with the processing of an individual to figure out the tool, rather than the final goal. The lecture also included the concept of hidden and false affordances, where the incorporation of hidden affordances mainly focused on creating a sense of curiosity where the user deliberately struggles and puts inn this thought process into figuring out the product which mainly depends upon what the design intends to achieve. Similarly, a false affordance makes use of visual cues to mislead the user into believing that a particular design affords a certain interaction when it really does not but is only intended for certain forms of design and again focusing on the fact of what the designer is trying to achieve through his design. Affordances also depend largely upon human conditioning, people from different ethnicities, backgrounds, culture, and regions are conditioned different form each other hence it all comes back to the research capabilities of a designer, how well informed a particular design is and how well can it afford to cater to as many individuals around the world keeping in mind how human conditioning is playing a huge role and varies from place to place.
