Tag Archives: flipped-classroom

Constraints

In regards to Norman’s (1988) concept of ‘affordances’ and ‘constraints’ in this chapter Ritchie refers to affordances and constraints in relation to what are described as ‘interactive narratives’.

Quote:

Affordances and constraints: An affordance is both the perceived and actual properties of a system or object that determine how it may possibly be used. Conversely a constraint is the actual and perceived attributes of an object or system that limits its possible uses. There are four types of constraints: physical, semantic, cultural and logical.

Reference:

Ritchie, J. ‘The Affordances and Constraints of Mobile Locative Media’ In Hjorth, L., J. Burgess and I. Richardson (eds) Studying Mobile Media: Cultural Technologies, Mobile Communication, and the iPhone, New York: Routledge. pp. 53-67.

Affordances as a relationship

Understanding the concept of ‘affordances’ is complex due to the different uses of the term in varying contexts.

The wikipedia overview although not necessarily an authoritative reference point provides an insight into the way Norman uses the concept differently in relation to the field of interaction and user experience design.

Gibson’s use of the concept within the field of cognitive psychology and focuses on potential actions. From wikipedia:

He defined affordances as all “action possibilities” latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual’s ability to recognize them, but always in relation to agents and therefore dependent on their capabilities. For instance, a set of steps which rises four feet high does not afford the act of climbing if the actor is a crawling infant.

While Norman takes this another step in relation to interaction and user experience design. In Normans use of affordances the person brings to an object prior knowledge and has particular goals. In connection with the notion of design it is about the relationship that the user can have with the object, which is referred to by Norman as ‘perceived affordances’. From wikipedia:

It makes the concept dependent not only on the physical capabilities of an actor, but also the actor’s goals, plans, values, beliefs, and past experiences. If an actor steps into a room with an armchair and a softball, Gibson’s original definition of affordances allows that the actor may throw the chair and sit on the ball, because this is objectively possible. Norman’s definition of (perceived) affordances captures the likelihood that the actor will sit on the armchair and throw the softball. Effectively, Norman’s affordances “suggest” how an object may be interacted with. For example, the size and shape of a softball obviously fit nicely in the average human hand, and its density and texture make it perfect for throwing. The user may also bring past experiences to bear with similar objects (baseballs, perhaps) when evaluating a new affordance.

In our experiments we focus on online video practices and explore what social media services afford the online media practitioner. We bring to that exploration preconceived ideas about how video should be used to create fiction and nonfiction video works. What we are exploring through both the evaluation of theory and a practice-led investigation (producing video in the service being analysed) – is how video can be used to communicate in relation to making the most of what each service has to offer this type of online media practice. In addition to this we are making new discoveries in relation to how the affordances of video, computers and the network may alter a videographic practice.

Bill Gaver in the article ‘Technological Affordances’ in the design field makes a useful point in regards to working with different technologies. Gaver suggests that affordances are examined (quote) “as a way of focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of technologies with respect to the possibilities they offer the people that might use them.” (p.79). This argument can be used within the context of online media practice in regards to media production. How can we work differently with video within the constraints and affordances of the varying services online?

Ultimately we are interested in what we can do with video, computers and the network?

References:

Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York.

Norman, D 1999, Affordance, conventions and design (Part 2), Nielsen Norman
Group, viewed April 2012, .

Gaver B 1991, ‘Technology Affordances’, Proceeding CHI ’91 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp 79-84.

Additional text available in the Library:

Gibson, J 1979 The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception Houghton Mifflin, Boston.

Affordances overview

The use of the term ‘affordance’ in this investigation is taken from Norman (1998) within the field of design, and refers to the properties of things in relation to how they are used.

In the Design of Everyday Things (Norman 1998), the term ‘affordance’ is defined as the ‘perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine how the thing could possibly be used’ (1998, p.9). Norman suggests that a person forms a ‘conceptual model’ of how things are used, and this is comprised of ‘affordances, constraints and mappings’ (1998, p.12). A pair of scissors is provided as an example. The holes in the handles, which are designed to take fingers, are an ‘affordance’. The diameter of the holes is a ‘constraint’ designed to indicate how many fingers can be put in each hole. In regards to the concept of ‘mapping’, the relationships developed between the constraints and affordances—in this case the fingers and the holes—indicate how the scissors are to be operated (Norman 1998).

With computers, Norman (1998) draws attention to the issue of conceptual models being made visible on a device that is not as tangible as (for example) a pair of scissors. Norman outlines that:

The abstract nature of the computer poses a particular challenge for the designer. The computer works electronically, invisibly, with no sign of the actions it is performing. And it is instructed through an abstract language, one that specifies the internal flow of control and movement of information, but one not particularly suited for the needs of the user (1998, p.177–8).

Norman (1998) uses this argument about the abstract characteristics of computers to make a point about the mission of interaction designers who work solely on making the computer usable for users, as opposed to programmers who focus on the operability of computer software. In regards to designing conceptual models for computer users, Norman (1998) suggests interaction designers concentrate on turning the abstract qualities of a computer into perceivable and comprehensible designs that can be used easily like other everyday things. I would suggest, using Norman’s concepts, that a significant part of creating conceptual models for computers, like in the design of a pair of scissors, involves making the relations between the ‘constraints’ and ‘affordances’ perceivable to computer users in the form of ‘mappings’.

Making a connection with working with computer, and the nexus between design and media production, the concept of affordances is also contextualised in Inventing the Digital Medium (Murray 2012). The author states: ‘Looking at the computer as a single new medium we can see its defining representational affordances: The computer is encyclopedic, spatial, procedural and participatory’ (Murray 2012, p.51). The ‘procedural’ affordance of computers is described as having the ‘ability to represent and execute conditional behaviours’ (Murray 2012, p.51). These procedural properties of computers allow fragments of information to be organised into different combinations that are not fixed. Murray’s second ‘participatory affordance’ enables a user to influence the process of how fragments are converted into communicable information, along with altering and adding content. The ‘encyclopedic affordance’ utilises the potential to store large volumes of information in varying types of collections that can be communicated as knowledge. In regards to ‘spatial affordances’, space on a computer becomes virtual and navigable, which sets it apart from more traditional media in regards to how it is represented in an interface.

References:

Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York. (pp. 1-33)

Norman, D 1999, Affordance, conventions and design (Part 2), Nielsen Norman
Group, viewed April 2012, http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordance_conv.html.

Murray, JH 2012, Inventing the medium: principles of interaction design as a cultural
practice, MIT Press, Cambridge, ‪Massachusetts‬.‬‬‬‬‬ pp.51-59)

Week 2 Video Lecture

Here is a week 2 video lecture (16 mins) to compliment the flipped classroom material. Please have a look at this before you come to the tutes this week.

This video provides some context around what we are covering this week mainly in regards the protocols and logics of blogging for this course.

There is an additional reading that you should put alongside this video.

Miles, Adrian. Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge [online]. Screen Education, No. 45, 2007: 24-30.

Please note I have added this material to the (week 2) flipped classroom notes.

Week 2 Lecture (flipped classroom)

The week 2 lecture for Networked Media will be online and is referred to as “flipped classroom”. Please refer to the Week 2 (flipped classroom) Google doc for the readings and videos I would like you to watch before the tutorial next week.

In this document I have asked you to complete some blog entries and be prepared to share some of your research in the tutorial next week. Engaging with this material forms part of the assessment and what will be submitted as part of Task 1.