Lecture 01 : Affordances

Finding a good and a bad affordance.

When we talked about affordances in our course, the main example that I kept in mind was the one about door handles. I had never truly thought about their design, but once we talked about it, I was able to vividly remeber the many times in which I pushed instead of pulled and wondered who was the designer of such an atrocity.

That’s why my first example of a daily affordance is this door handle:

This is the door handle that allows me, each and every day, to enter my flatshare’s building. And I’ll explain just below, why it is one of my freshest memories in my door handles' repertoire.

As for the next example, it was pretty hard for me to find a good affordance. That’s because good affordances are not as striking as bad ones. But after some intensive research, I ended up choosing another handle, and that is the one of my chamber’s window :

Why are these affordances good / bad ?

The door handle is a bad one because the handle is the same inside or outside the building, but the door is supposed to be pushed while entering and pulled while exiting. Thus, since the form is the same my sometimes tired brain assumes that “Form follows function." is respected everywhere and I mess it all up almost twice a week.

The main problem about this handle, apart from being the same for two different purposes, is the fact that its shape is a weird hybrid between a pull / push affordance. The latter is also explanatory for my numerous mess ups.

Concerning my window’s handle, I believe it to be a great affordance because its various forms truly follow functions

Notice how each and every different position of the handle bears a different function of the window. If the handle is facing down I don’t want to pull it towards or away from me. Rotated at a 90 degrees angle it want to pull it towards like a door and I expect to open it as such. Finally, at 180 degrees, I still want to pull it but I kinda expect it to be opened vertically, like a lever would open it.

How could we fix the bad one ?

The bad one could be fixed by firstly, choosing two different shapes of handle for the inside and the outside. Furthermore, we should also try to reduce the confusion between a pulling and pushing motion by choosing true functional form like the ones below.