Affordance -- finding tools everywhere
The
idea of "affordance" has has come up in my readings for my History of Instructional Design class. The term refers to opportunities for
action provided by a particular object or environment. It is used in the fields of perceptual psychology, cognitive psychology, environmental psychology, industrial design, human–computer interaction (HCI), interaction design and artificial intelligence, and in the focus of this blog, instructional design.
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Jakob Johann von Uexküll (8 September 1864 - 25 July 1944)
a Baltic German biologist
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| Jakob Uexküll with his son, Thure |
In the 1920 article Kompositionslehre der Natur, Estonian biosemiotician Jakob von Uexküll wrote of a "funktionale Tönung" or functional colouring inherent to objects. While the pere Uexküll studied animals in their environments, the son, Thure
The term, "affordances" was originally coined by American psychologist James J. Gibson as part of his work on optical flow. His 1977 article "The Theory of Affordances" formed a basis for his 1979 book "An Ecological Approach to Design". After his death in 1979, Gibson's wife, Dr. Eleanor J. Gibson, explained her theory of perceptual learning in An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development.
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| James J. Gibson (1904-1979), U.S. psychologist and philosopher, first used the term "affordances." He taught at Smith College (1928–49) and Cornell University (1949–72). |
"The original definition [of affordance] described all action possibilities that are physically possible. This was then refined to describe action possibilities of which an actor is aware. The term has further evolved for use in the context of HCI as indicating the easy discoverability of possible actions."
In this video link, Norman describes his take on "affordance."
