First lecture
This page aims to show one good and one bad affordance in our daily life.
Let’s start with a quick definition of affordance :
A situation where an object’s sensory characteristics intuitively imply its functionality and use. (https://blog.prototypr.io/affordance-and-its-future-in-designing-interfaces-973a48ae8a0)
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Let’s start with a good one :
It is difficult to find a device that we use alone for the first time. Indeed, its affordance is, I think, biased as soon as someone shows you how a thing works. However, I found one in my former daily life. Both my high-school and prepa cafeterias were equipped with a biometric device instead of badges. The interesting part was that this device was made for children. The first time you arrived, even without any knowledge about how it works, you knew you had to put your hand inside.
Here is the design :
Mine even had the shape of a hand driven on it. To open the gate, you shall understand. I think it is as simple but still relevant example of good affordance. Most probably only one or two fingers are detected. If you ever went to United-States, you know how restictive those devices can be.
They decided not to put a small button to test those fingers. Indeed, this solution would bring mistakes. For instance, it would be hard to capture the finger needed in the right angle. Engineers decided to ask for the entire hand. The action of posing his hand is common for everyone (when we wash our hands for instance).
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What about a bad one :
I want to highlight the link between affordance and design. Both teams have to work together to give a correct application. I have to link example about it.
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The former SNCF application It was very nice to the eye to see a shinning sun moving in our phone during the launch of the application.
However, it was downloaded each time, so at a time when internet speed connection was not 5G’s, many customers were simply not able to start the app and to access the content because of this animation ! -
Samsung Galaxy tab website Thinking current company now understand the issue is overestimating all of them. Last week I went to Samsung website, I was very surprise to see it lag both on PC and Mac. Maybe my internet connection was not good enough to download all those, I suppose, great animation. Maybe both computers were not powerful enough. Still, I can’t imagine that such a case had not been prepared. Design is not everything. Affordance was then entirely broken as I couldn’t get the main information. I let you see by yourself :
Made with 2016 Macbook
We can see that even as I was scrolling at a constant slowly speed, text is erratic. Sometimes it appears once the page is up in the screen, far too late. Sometimes the contrast does not able to read in good condition.
We can guess that when it was developed those animations were great, but here it is ridiculous. Both design and affordance are completely broken.