Binding the material and the discursive with a relational approach of affordances

As Norman's vision of affordances developed twenty-six years ago is unable to address complex challenges faced by today's designers, we outline a view of affordances as discursive relations in HCI design. This argument is framed in the discussion of a larger trend of work beyond the HCI field, the scholarship on relational affordances from the fields of communication and organization studies. Through comparison and interrogation, we maintain a relational approach of affordances that bind the material and the discursive will help us to address design issues such as discursive power, cultural values, performed identities, mediated agency, and articulated voices in this increasingly globalized world and design culturally sensitive technology for transformation and emancipation. With a few cases, this paper deciphers the hidden power relationship of interaction design and suggests ways of we should design for social affordances.

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