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{ Tag Archives } affordances

dan piepenbring on heidegger against the birkerts kindle argument

Read this post on if:book today re: using Heidegger to contest Birkerts’ arguments against the Kindle.  Not too interested in that argument, but Heidegger’s terms here resonate somewhat with me.  The idea of “readiness-to-hand” and the way all tools exist in a network/environment connects with Gibson’s idea of affordances.  Here’s Piepenbring’s gloss on Heidegger:
In his [...]

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2009 03 27 blips
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Don Norman: Signifiers, not affordances

Last Norman quote of the day: here Norman argues that designers should focus more on adding signifiers to their objects, rather than affordances, which may or may not be easily perceived or used.  Signifiers, on the other hand, are obvious, and make use obvious.
People need some way of understanding the product or service, some sign [...]

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2009 03 15 blips
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