Dynamics of Affordances and Implications for Design

Affordance is an important concept in HCI. There are various interpretations of affordances but it has been difficult to use this concept for design purposes. Often the treatment of affordances in the current HCI literature has been as a one-to-one relationship between a user and an artefact. According to our views, affordance is a dynamic, always emerging relationship between a human and his environment. We believe that the social and cultural contexts within which an artefact is situated affect the way in which the artefact is used. Using a Structuration Theory approach, we argue that affordances need also be treated at a much broader level, encompassing social and cultural aspects. We suggest that affordances should be seen at three levels: single user, organizational (or work group) and societal. Focusing on the organizational level affordances, we provide details of several important factors that affect the emergence of affordances

Choice architecture and design with intent

Motivation – Choice architecture (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008) is a phrase of the moment among politicians and economists seeking to influence public behaviour, but the relevance of the concept to designers has received little attention. This paper places choice architecture within the context of Design with Intent—design intended to influence user behaviour. Research approach – The concepts are introduced and choice architecture is deconstructed. Findings/Design – Affordances and Simon’s behavioural model (1955) help understand choice architecture in more detail. Research limitations/Implications – This is only a very brief, limited foray into what choice architecture is. Originality/Value – User behaviour can be a major determinant of product efficiency: user decisions can contribute significantly to environmental impacts. Understanding the reasons behind them, a range of design techniques can be identified to help users towards more efficient interactions. Take away message – The intended outcome is a useful design method for helping users use things more efficiently

Affordances, context and sociality

Affordances, i.e. the opportunity of actions offered by the environment, are one of the central research topics for the theoretical perspectives that view cognition as emerging from the interaction between the environment and the body. Being at the bridge between perception and action, affordances help to question a dichotomous view of perception and action. While Gibson’s view of affordances is mainly externalist, many contemporary approaches define affordances (and micro-affordances) as the product of long-term visuomotor associations in the brain. These studies have emphasized the fact that affordances are activated automatically, independently from the context and the previous intention to act: for example, affordances related to objects’ size would emerge even if the task does not require focusing on size. This emphasis on the automaticity of affordances has led to overlook their flexibility and contextual-dependency. In this contribution I will outline and discuss recent perspectives and evidence that reveal the flexibility and context-dependency of affordances, clarifying how they are modulated by the physical, cultural and social context. I will focus specifically on social affordances, i.e. on how perception of affordances might be influenced by the presence of multiple actors having different goals

Virtual World-Weariness: On Delaying the Experiential Erosion of Digital Environments

A common understanding of the role of a game developer includes establishing (or at least partially establishing) what is interactively and perceptually available in (video)game environments: what elements and behaviors those worlds include and allow, and what is – instead – left out of their ‘possibility horizon’. The term ‘possibility horizon’ references the Ancient Greek origin of the term ‘horizon’, ὄρος (oros), which denotes a frontier – a spatial limit. On this etymological foundation, ‘horizon’ is used here to indicate the spatial and operational boundaries that a (video)game environment affords its players. This book chapter discusses a particular feeling that emerge in relation to playful encounters with the ‘possibility horizons’ of videogames. I am referring here to the realization, as a player, that a game environment can be experientially exhausted and is, as such, ultimately banal. In other words, I will examine how our deliberate engagement with the interactive environments of digital games can trigger sensations that are analogous to what Romantic authors referred to as Weltschmerz (‘world-weariness’)

The Semiotic Nature of Power in Social-Ecological Systems

abstract: Anderies (2015); Anderies et al. (2016), informed by Ostrom (2005), aim to employ robust feedback control models of social-ecological systems (SESs), to inform policy and the design of institutions guiding resilient resource use. Cote and Nightingale (2012) note that the main assumptions of resilience research downplay culture and social power. Addressing the epistemic gap between positivism and interpretation (Rosenberg 2016), this dissertation argues that power and culture indeed are of primary interest in SES research. Human use of symbols is seen as an evolved semiotic capacity. First, representation is argued to arise as matter achieves semiotic closure (Pattee 1969; Rocha 2001) at the onset of natural selection. Guided by models by Kauffman (1993), the evolution of a symbolic code in genes is examined, and thereon the origin of representations other than genetic in evolutionary transitions (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995; Beach 2003). Human symbolic interaction is proposed as one that can support its own evolutionary dynamics. The model offered for wider dynamics in society are “flywheels,” mutually reinforcing networks of relations. They arise as interactions in a domain of social activity intensify, e.g. due to interplay of infrastructures, mediating built, social, and ecological affordances (An- deries et al. 2016). Flywheels manifest as entities facilitated by the simplified interactions (e.g. organizations) and as cycles maintaining the infrastructures (e.g. supply chains). They manifest internal specialization as well as distributed intention, and so can favor certain groups’ interests, and reinforce cultural blind spots to social exclusion (Mills 2007). The perspective is applied to research of resilience in SESs, considering flywheels a semiotic extension of feedback control. Closer attention to representations of potentially excluded groups is justified on epistemic in addition to ethical grounds, as patterns in cul- tural text and social relations reflect the functioning of wider social processes. Participatory methods are suggested to aid in building capacity for institutional learning.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Anthropology 201

Intuitive Cities: Pre-Reflective, Aesthetic and Political Aspects of Urban Design

Evidence affirms that aesthetic engagement patterns our movements, often with us barely aware. This invites an examination of pre-reflective engagement within cities and also aesthetic experience as a form of the pre-reflective. The invitation is amplified because design has political implications. For instance, it can draw people in or exclude them by establishing implicitly recognized public-private boundaries. The Value Sensitive Design school, which holds that artifacts embody ethical and political values, stresses some of this. But while emphasizing that design embodies implicit values, research in this field lacks sustained attention to largely unconscious background biases or values, rooted in cultural attitudes and personal interests, that lead theorists and planners—often too narrowly—to promote design organized around specific values such as defensibility. In examining these points, I draw on J. J. Gibson, a central figure for some writing on aesthetics and cities, and whom pragmatists and phenomenologists in turn influenced. Taking a cue from pragmatists in particular, I argue Gibson’s perceptual theory of affordances entails a theory of values, meaning our perception and therewith movements are inherently value-based. I advocate design that accounts for relatively constantly held values such as safety, while also handling the vast pluralism that exists and not crushing the aesthetic vibrancy of city life

Life is an Adventure! An agent-based reconciliation of narrative and scientific worldviews\ud

The scientific worldview is based on laws, which are supposed to be certain, objective, and independent of time and context. The narrative worldview found in literature, myth and religion, is based on stories, which relate the events experienced by a subject in a particular context with an uncertain outcome. This paper argues that the concept of “agent”, supported by the theories of evolution, cybernetics and complex adaptive systems, allows us to reconcile scientific and narrative perspectives. An agent follows a course of action through its environment with the aim of maximizing its fitness. Navigation along that course combines the strategies of regulation, exploitation and exploration, but needs to cope with often-unforeseen diversions. These can be positive (affordances, opportunities), negative (disturbances, dangers) or neutral (surprises). The resulting sequence of encounters and actions can be conceptualized as an adventure. Thus, the agent appears to play the role of the hero in a tale of challenge and mystery that is very similar to the "monomyth", the basic storyline that underlies all myths and fairy tales according to Campbell [1949]. This narrative dynamics is driven forward in particular by the alternation between prospect (the ability to foresee diversions) and mystery (the possibility of achieving an as yet absent prospect), two aspects of the environment that are particularly attractive to agents. This dynamics generalizes the scientific notion of a deterministic trajectory by introducing a variable “horizon of knowability”: the agent is never fully certain of its further course, but can anticipate depending on its degree of prospect

Toward a script theory of guidance in computer-supported collaborative learning

This article presents an outline of a script theory of guidance for computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). With its four types of components of internal and external scripts (play, scene, role, and scriptlet) and seven principles, this theory addresses the question how CSCL practices are shaped by dynamically re-configured internal collaboration scripts of the participating learners. Furthermore, it explains how internal collaboration scripts develop through participation in CSCL practices. It emphasizes the importance of active application of subject matter knowledge in CSCL practices, and it prioritizes transactive over non-transactive forms of knowledge application in order to facilitate learning. Further, the theory explains how external collaboration scripts modify CSCL practices and how they influence the development of internal collaboration scripts. The principles specify an optimal scaffolding level for external collaboration scripts and allow for the formulation of hypotheses about the fading of external collaboration scripts. Finally, the article points towards conceptual challenges and future research questions