Week 4 | Affordance

http://convevo.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/the-customer-is-king/

Customer Is The King!
The community is in charge. Why do we forget that? "From matching customers to products, we need to match products to customers" - Seth Godin. What do customers want? Customers experience, cost reduction and most probably revenue generation. The rise of the customer community as well as the shunt in the performance of those who organised the system has created customer power. The customers is now ahead of the business. Nowadays, customers are the one who lead the product, customers determines the direction of a product/services. The day the company takes control of a product is gone forever.

http://haneeninterior.blog.com/2010/02/01/affordance-of-the-space/

Affordance
In the world of design, the term "affordance" has taken on a life far beyond the original meaning. The original definition is as below :

"The word "affordance" was originally invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between
the world and an actor (a person or animal). To Gibson, affordances are a relationship. They are a part of nature: they do not have to be visible,
known, or desirable. Some affordances are yet to be discovered. Some are dangerous. I suspect that none of us know all the affordances of even
everyday objects." - jnd.org

We have to make a product to suits the user and the purpose is to suits the need and desires of our customer. A good affordance design of an object is that it is able to communicate with the user the way it is suppose to be.

Perceiving Affordance

Perceiving is another type of affordance. It is in which is based on  users and how they perceive the affordance to use the object. Some factors to determine it is base on, context, culture(society),  instinct and mental models.

Forcing Functions:

A forcing function is an aspect of a design that prevents the user from taking an action without consciously considering information relevant to that action. It forces conscious attention upon something ("bringing to conciousness") and thus deliberately disrupts the efficient or automatised performance of a task. - Interaction-Design.org

1. Lock in - can't quit certain application until something is done.
2. Lock out - can't open certain application until certain action is taken to open it. 
3. Interlock - combine the element of Lock in and Lock out , most common forcing function mechanism.

In conclusion we can conclude that all design is somehow related to affordance. Everything that is affordance can bring advantages to the community not only the customers but also the users. We might be a designer but remember that we are users too. And always remember that customer is the king!

Written by Wan Mohd Abrar Bin Wan Mohd Sharif (1102700593)