Due to the Labour day public holiday falling on a Monday, we didn’t have a lecture or tutorial. However, the lecture slides were made available online for students to read at home.
This week’s lecture was focusing on ‘affordances’ which nicely tied into the course prompt:
“How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?”
This focus on affordances were supported by the readings which were:
Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things , Basic Book, New York (Sections: Preface vii-xv; Chapter one pp 1-13; Chapter 4 (constraints) pp 81-87; (computers) pp 177-186).
Norman, D 1999, ‘Affordance, conventions and design (Part 2)’, Nielsen Norman Group, viewed 1 April 2012, http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordance_conv.html”
The author of this weeks readings, Don Norman, a cognitive scientist and usability engineer, explains early on in the book The Design of Everyday Things that although people are often keen to blame themselves for having trouble with a products function, it is not the fault of the user but rather the product is poorly designed as designers don’t completely consider the products relationship with the user. I found myself falling victim to this since reading it and have been seeing why my interaction with products are being tested.
Norman focuses on user-centered design and explains the meaning of ‘affordances’ through simple videos. Norman defines affordances as:
“Perceived and actual properties of the product primarily those fundamental properties that determine how the product could possibly be used. It is the relationship between the person and the product and what the person can do with that product.”
But to understand affordance you must also understand conventions:
“A convention is a cultural constraint, one that has evolved over time. Conventions are not arbitrary: they evolve, they require a community of practice. They are slow to be adopted, and once adopted, slow to go away. So although the word implies voluntary choice, the reality is that they are real constraints upon our behaviour. Use them with respect. Violate them only with great risk”
Taking both these terms and applying them to the class prompt I can begin to think about the affordances of Instagram. Seeing how people are actually using it and how its relationship with users affects the way photos and videos are shared online, which is being guided by conventions stemming from traditional print media.