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we are all designers in the sense that all of us deliberately design our lives, our rooms, and the way we do things.
All artificial things are designed. Whether it is the layout of furniture in a room, the paths through a garden or forest, or the intricacies of an electronic device, some person or group of people had to decide upon the layout, operation, and mechanisms. Not all designed things involve physical structures.
Design is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology. When done well, the results are brilliant, pleasurable products. When done badly, the products are unusable, leading to great frustration and irritation.
Great designers produce pleasurable experiences. Experience: note the word.
Experience is critical, for it determines how fondly people remember their interactions.
An affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used.
The presence of an affordance is jointly determined by the qualities of the object and the abilities of the agent that is interacting.
We are used to thinking that properties are associated with objects. But affordance is not a property. An affordance is a relationship. Whether an affordance exists depends upon the properties of both the object and the agent.
Affordances determine what actions are possible. Signifiers communicate where the action should take place. We need both.
People search for clues, for any sign that might help them cope and understand. It is the sign that is important, anything that might signify meaningful information. Designers need to provide these clues. What people need, and what designers must provide, are signifiers.
Signifiers can be deliberate and intentional, such as the sign PUSH on a door, but they may also be accidental and unintentional, such as our use of the visible trail made by previous people walking through a field or over a snow-covered terrain to determine the best path. Or how we might use the presence or absence of people waiting at a train station to determine whether we have missed the train.
It doesn’t matter whether the useful signal was deliberately placed or whether it is incidental: there is no necessary distinction. Why should it matter whether a flag was placed as a deliberate clue to wind direction (as is done at airports or on the masts of sailboats) or was there as an advertisement or symbol of pride in one’s country (as is done on public buildings). Once I interpret a flag’s motion to indicate wind direction, it does not matter why it was placed there.
