How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things

by Jenny L. Davis

A conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective.

Technological affordances mediate between the features of a technology and the outcomes of engagement with that technology. The concept of affordances, which migrated from psychology to design with Donald Norman's influential 1988 book, The Design of Everyday Things, offers a useful analytical tool in technology studies—but, Jenny Davis argues in How Artifacts Afford, it is in need of a conceptual update. Davis provides just such an update, introducing the mechanisms and conditions framework, which offers both a vocabulary and necessary critical perspective for affordance analyses.

The mechanisms and conditions framework shifts the question from what objects afford to how objects afford, for whom, and under what circumstances. Davis shows that through this framework, analyses can account for the power and politics of technological artifacts. She situates the framework within a critical approach that views technology as materialized action. She explains how request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, and allow are mechanisms of affordance, and shows how these mechanisms take shape through variable conditions—perception, dexterity, and cultural and institutional legitimacy.

Putting the framework into action, Davis identifies existing methodological approaches that complement it, including critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA), app feature analysis, and adversarial design. In today's rapidly changing sociotechnical landscape, the stakes of affordance analyses are high. Davis's mechanisms and conditions framework offers a timely theoretical reboot, providing tools for the crucial tasks of both analysis and design.

Genres: Design, Technology, Politics, Philosophy

208 pages, Hardcover

Published August 11, 2020

Reviews

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a good overview of affordances & critical approaches to studying affordances. There is one chapter in particular that lays out practical, empirical research methods for studying affordances that I furiously underlined and highlighted. I almost wish that the entire book was spent exploring and detailing these methods, as they were so compelling and actionable.

[EmelineB · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for designers, researchers, and people interested in technologies. In 6 short chapters, Davis proposes:
- an overview of the concept of affordance, why it's useful, and how to address concerns leveraged against it to use it fully
- an overview of the history of the concept and how it spanned from psychology to fields as diverse as anthropology, media and communication studies, engineering, STS, education etc, as well as the two main critiques leveraged against it: that it is binary and universal.
- to address these critiques, she builds on the work of McLuhan, Actor Network Theory and Ernst Schraub to show that artifacts and people are co-constitutive (contrary to what McLuhan thought, technologies don't determine everything) and account for power effects (which was lacking in ANT)
- a framework to discuss affordances, with two components: mechanisms and affordances
- methods to understand and describe affordances (critical technocultural discourse analysis, walkthrough and feature analysis, values reflection and adversarial design)

The book is full of empirical examples for easy understanding. It's a great support for teaching.

[Marty Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. It acknowledges all of my previous concerns with the ambiguous and contradictory definitions of affordances, and does a fantastic job of introducing the mechanisms and conditions framework in a comprehensive and easy to read way. Strong examples throughout bolster the theoretical discussion further.

[Yeji · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glad I read this! Fits nicely into a much-needed practical turn in phil of tech, i.e. less theory (we know by now that Things Are Bad), more application.

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for its review and discussion of affordances and its breakdown of request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, and allow.

[Helene Tracey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has so much potential to be interesting, but it is bogged down to the point where it reads like a scientific paper

[Marco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Affordances are frequently mentioned in the design and STS literatures. There is no consensus about the content of this term, even though there are multiple attempts to theorise it. The author proposes shifting the focus from "what are the affordances?" to how artefacts afford and under what circumstances, and examines approaches for implementing this vision.

The author attempts to make sense of the current mess, providing a coherent account that attends to the political and social contexts in which technologies operate. In addition, the text presents useful techniques for deploying the concept. Curiously, this successful approach shows the limits of "affordance" as a concept: it allows us to understand modes of interaction with technological artefacts, but even a formulation as elegant as the one presented in this book is still centred on individual artefacts (such as apps, devices, or even platforms). As such, recent attempts to take affordances beyond their use case as a design tool seem misguided. This, of course, is not a problem with the book, which does an excellent job of showing how affordances can be a powerful tool for critical design and engagement with designed artefacts.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ótimas elucidações sobre o conceito de affordance. Além de apresentar uma abordagem teórica interessante e resumida sobre como aplicar a análise de affordance a pesquisas em diferentes áreas, com especial atenção à comunicação e estudos de mídia, a autora apresenta proposições metodológicas possíveis para a investigação de aplicativos e plataformas. Infelizmente é uma das autoras que peca quando desenvolve o pensamento sobre a teoria ator-rede. Ela observa que a relação simétrica entre elementos de uma rede pende para uma análise apolítica. No entanto, a TAR não é sobre isso. É sobre evitar universalizações e generalizações, é partir para a análise micropolítica de objetos vivos, em movimento. O poder é um dos elementos dessa rede, mas ele não é determinante para que ela se sustente ou seja configurada. No mais, o livro é uma leitura leve, descontraída e propositiva que permite novos olhares para a affordance.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

concise, cogent, and far-seeing - donald norman could NEVER

[Alexander Van Leadam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Davis is often spot-on in her selective summaries of affordance literature criticism but her own solutions are rather too abstract and elliptical to convince.

[Hannah L M · Rating 2 out of 5]

read this for required reading. was hard to get through and I’m not sure if I retained anything

[camille! · Rating 5 out of 5]

starting off hot design theory autumn w a banger

[Dan Bennett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read a huge amount of work on affordances over the past 8 years and this is some of my least favourite writing on the topic. This is incredibly sloppy, misinterprets things (e.g. despite this being a key claim of the book, the lesson of Warren's classic study is not that there are degrees of affordance. The study identifies thresholds). It also ignores a huge swathe of recent work on affordances theory (e.g. Withagen, Skilled Intentionality Framework): work that addresses the same concerns in a more precise and imo useful, more "mechanistic" way (despite repeated claims to provide "mechanisms" here what we get are more like high level labels for the experience of the effect of the affordances). I really struggle to see the contribution or the appeal.

[Kasper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting book about affordance. The background discussions were strong and even if I disagreed with much the author said, it was exciting to disagree and think twice based on the arguments. The proposed framework, focusing on mechanisms and conditions, was less convincing in part because the many questions it raised were not always answered. But overall, a nice read with loads of margin notes.