You cannot afford bad affordance

The day I started to work at the Crossmedialab I tried to adjust my chair. It is one of those typical office chairs that should be adjustable in every thinkable fashion. I managed to change it in several ways - armrests, seat, back - but I just couldn't figure out how to adjust the height. A pretty standard and therefore easy accessible option, I would say. Because I am an engineer, I forced myself to understand how it works. So I first turned the chair upside down to see the mechanisms, but they were all covered up. It was only after a few frustrating attempts of pushing and pulling all kind of parts of the chair that I figured out how to change the height of the thing.

To my opinion the chair - or the designer, that is - should give me clear visual hints on how to adjust it. A lever affords pulling, a door with no handle affords pushing, a cup affords pouring fluids into it and so on. Something that is generally known as affordance or to be more precise perceived affordance. Donald Norman describes perceived affordance as: “The appearance of the device could provide the critical clues required for its proper operation” .    

So, I didn’t perceive any good affordance of the way to operate the chair properly. And that frustrated me. Desk chairs are around for many decades. So they should at least have reasonable affordance to be operated properly. Of course this not only goes for desk chairs, but for any technology. But I often see that designers prefer ‘eye-candy’ above the functionality and that can lead to bad affordance. And that, on its turn, can lead to frustration of the user.

Oh, and you can adjust the height of the mentioned desk chair by pulling (!) a small knob that actually affords pushing. It’s placed at the bottom of the right armrest. But to my opinion an explanation about this function shouldn't be necessary.

_{[1] Norman, D.A., Affordance, Conventions and Design.}

Tagged with: deskchair, affordance, form follows function,