Affordances and Environmentally Significant Behavior

In this paper, we apply design-by-affordance methodology to the problem of environmentally significant behavior. Affordances, as originally formulated, represent opportunities for action offered by a product. Subsequent work explored the use of affordances, defined as context-dependent relations between artifacts and users, in lieu of functions as a basis for design. While others have also developed detailed deductive methods of discovering affordances in products, we present affordance listing as an expedient technique for inductively discovering relevant affordances. We also present affordance transfer, a method for redesigning products to encourage environmentally significant behavior. We conclude by discussing insights gained from applying our two approaches.Copyright © 2012 by ASME