Affordance-Based Methods for Design

In previous work, the authors have suggested that the concept of affordance, a term borrowed from the field of perceptual psychology, should be considered as more fundamental to design than other concepts such as function and behavior. This paper continues this avenue of research by presenting a generalized theory of affordances applicable to design. Then several affordance-based methods for design are presented with brief examples. Methods are introduced for designing Artifact-User Affordances, Artifact-Artifact Affordances, various kinds of graphical affordance structures, embodiment design, and reverse engineering. The affordance-based methods presented offer a very different way of thinking from what would be used in a purely functional approach. In particular, the affordance-based methods emphasize satisfaction of user demands and wishes (what the artifact should afford) while safeguarding at each step against introducing unwanted or dangerous features (what the artifact should not afford). The affordance-based methods also lend themselves to taking advantage of the multiple afffordances of various objects, to achieve naturally what is sometimes termed “functional integration”.