brightly colored food

I miss doing usability studies. I didn’t think it would kick in so soon, but it’s true. I was talking with a friend today about things like how to administer a think-aloud script, advantages and disadvantages to moderating from behind the glass, and how to get buy-in from the whole team on the objectives for a study, and I got just a wee nostalgic. If anyone in the Pittsburgh area needs some usability help, especially this summer while the courseload is easier, be sure to drop me an email.

Found another good article called Affordances: Clarifying and Evolving a Concept [pdf] that describes differences between J.J. Gibson’s original concept of affordances and how it was later extended by Don Norman. It gets a bit nitpicky about how each has used the term affordance, and goes so far as to do a literature review on usage of the term affordance in various CHI Proceedings, but it’s worth reading if you use the term, and it’s also a great jumping point to other literature on affordances.

If you aren’t going to read the whole article, here’s what the authors define as the main differences:

Gibson’s Affordances

Killing time waiting for class to start, I’m reading a book on visual perception. It’s covering J.J. Gibson’s theories about perception, which revolve around what he called “affordances” - yep, the same ones Don Norman writes about. Don Norman has two good articles that clarify and extend the use of the term for the design realm, and they’re both worth a read. Another article on affordances in software design discusses in more detail why interface elements are “perceived affordances” rather than “real affordances”, an important distinction. Sorta makes you wonder about the perceptual advantages for tangible computing interfaces - does anyone know of research in this area? Also, Gibon’s work on affordances came out in the late 70’s. Does anyone with more of a background in cognitive or neuroscience know if/how his theories have been updated?

Here is a selection of quotes from Gibson and others about affordances. Gibson’s take on affordances as being crucial to visual perception, and the emphasis on the relationship between the viewer and the object that’s perceived as having an affordance, especially when considered with the surrounding context, set him apart from most others who’ve studied visual perception, almost to the philosophical level - read the quote from Abram toward at the bottom. Here’s some related info on information pickup theory, the general theory of perception that affordances are based upon. And if you really want to keep dorking out, here’s a google search on gibson and affordances.

I saw Minority Report here in Pittsburgh with a classmate from the Interaction Design program and another from the HCI program. It was a good film compared AI or any of the other recent Spielberg stuff. Plenty of nifty future gizmos too, interfaces and gadgets and all that. There’s all the stuff you see in the previews with gesture recognition, plus a scene that incorporates voice recognition, and another that uses iris scanning to trigger customized ads. As we were driving home, one of my friends mentioned the voice recognition research she was currently involved in, and the other said that he had worked on very similar iris scanning technology at a previous company. And I thought of that Gibson quote: “The future is here, it’s just not widely distributed”.

From what I’ve seen of it, Pittsburgh is actually quite a nice city. Property is cheap, the architecture is consistenty beautiful (lots of brick), I’ve eaten at several good restaurants already (recommendations?), there are some cool cultural happenings, and I’ve seen more than a few cute girls in my neighborhood. That’s not to say that the surrounding areas aren’t standard issue suburbia, but the city itself doesn’t seem too bad. Right now I’m staying with a friend a block away from where Michael Douglas lived in the movie Wonder Boys.

After my little recent leave of absence from Brightly Colored Food, I’ll hopefully be writing here more often. Expect a bit more personal stuff, some more design stuff, and more stuff on technology in general.

Yes, I’ve been away, and it’s such poor form to leave a post about a going away party as the most recent post weeks after the party. It was nice seeing everyone who came to see me off, and those who didn’t were missed.

I left SF at 1 am two weeks ago and spent 36 hours on or near I-80, delirious and hoping that my poor little Honda wouldn’t bottom out from all the books, musical gear, and clothes it was dutifully transporting cross-country. But we made it, and here I am two weeks later: a bit more tan, a lot more rested, and ready for Pittsburgh.

I have more to post, but give me a couple of days — I’m not spending much time on the internet right now.