9/23 Gibsons Affordances Questions

"an action possibility available in the environment to an individual, independent of the individual's ability to perceive this possibility"

1. How do you understand this definition/description of affordance? Please put into your own words. What if anything may or may not be problematic about this interpretation of the notion of affordances?

            We understand affordances as a type of functional fixedness that the individual has to overcome.

2. What might be the connection between affordance and evolution?

According to the article, an animal’s way of life is set by a series of affordances.  Species evolve because the affordances are persistent and ongoing.

3. What is the difference between a niche and a habitat? Explain in your own words and give an example of each. What is your niche?

A habitat is the actual environment where something lives whereas a niche is a adaptive role of an organism that lives in that environmental system.

An affordance cuts the dichotomy of subjective and objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. The affordances of the environment are facts of the environment, not appearances. But they are not on the other hand, facts at the level of physics concerned with matter and energy and animals left out.

Get into your groups and answer the following questions

4. Pick three aspects/environmental conditions of this room or the third floor of FAC. Describe each of these aspects as an affordance. What activity is implied by the material? What sorts of sensory input does this  condition/object offer the user? One way of doing this might be able to put yourself in the place of an alien. What about the object or condition compels you to act upon it in a particular way?

1.    Chair, white board, computers used in class can all be categorized as affordances.  Each of these aspects has a potential possibility for the other to improve learning conditions.

a.     Chair: because of its curved surface it’s known it is contoured to the body and because of its hard surface it’s known that it can support weight.

b.    White board: because of its flat surface and its existing markings tells us it can be used for writing and communication.

c.     Table: because it is placed in front of the chair and it is sitting level and its flat surface we can see the potential ability that it can support the weight of other items.   

2.    Implied activity

a.     Chair: sitting

b.    White board: writing, displaying, communicating

c.     Table: support, suspension

3.    The sensory input

a.     Chair: touch, sight

b.    White board: touch, sight

c.     Table: touch, sight

d.     

4.    Condition

a.     Chair: curvature implies it can support a body

b.    White board: existing marks and markers and erasers placed in front of board

c.     Table: Its position in front of a chair and its level with the chair and existing items placed on top.

5. What do you think is the difference between usefulness and utility with respect to affordances?

Affordance is the initial thought of how to interact with an object.  Usefulness is the subjective and utility is the objective; usefulness depends on the individual and how they deem something as useful while utility is the actual action or design of that object.

6. What might be a false affordance? Create a situation other than that of the cat on the glass floor who is afraid to walk because the glass is transparent and there is a drop in floor? Think about how zoos keep animals in w/o cages or slapstick comedy.

When Kelsey’s Corgi (Kristie) sits in her cage and cries thinking she is locked in because the door is closed, but she could easily push it opened because it is not latched.

7. Are we aware of all of the affordances of an object or a condition?  Do you think affordances are cultural? Are they different for people with disabilities? 

No. For example we do not know the cultural affordances of an African tribal mask because we not necessarily understand how or why they were used, we just understand them as a piece of cultural art. It is almost like how Ariel does not know that a fork is used for eating because it is not part of her culture. 

8. metaphor and affordances? I think this might be worth thinking about this.

An affordance is the relation between an object and its environment and the potential action that the object can perform in said environment.  A metaphor figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object.  For example, an umbrella. Its affordance is to protect from the natural elements, but at the same time it is protecting you from something that is not exactly harmful.