WWW/Internet - Portal do Software Público Brasileiro

ISBN: 978-972-8939-25-0 © 2010 IADIS4. AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON AFFORDANCESAs part of an activity in an HCI class, 26 subjects were invited to identify the affordances of two differentartifacts: a Tablet-PC (in tablet mode) and the Apple iPad®,both known but still uncommon artifacts. The study happenedfew days after the launch day of the iPad in the United States,providing a single opportunity to observe the first timeinteraction with the device. The students were already familiarwith Norman’s and Gibson’s concept of affordance.The classroom was split into 2 groups: the first one with 14students analyzed the iPad first; and the second group with 12students analyzed first the Tablet-PC.Both groups first explored individually the artifact, passingit to each other in the same group; then they were asked towrite down an adjective that expressed their first impressionabout the artifact. The first impressions were collected only forthe first analyzed device to avoid a comparative opinion. After exploring the first device they interact with,they were asked to identify affordances classifying them according to the criteria described in Table 3. In thesecond moment, they changed the devices to repeat the analysis and to identify affordances of the secondartifact.4.1 Preliminary ResultsTable 3. Criteria to observe the four typesof affordancesType ofaffordancePhysicalPerceivedSocialMotivationalCriteria to observePhysical properties of the objectMental representation, designRelated to life in societySatisfaction of motivational needs:autonomy, identity, challenge,feedback, social relations, to influenceand to be influenced by someone,emotions.The identified affordances of both groups were compiled according to its category. A summary of the mostfrequent mentions is presented in Table 4 ordered by number of occurrence and illustrated in Figure 5.Negative aspects are preceded by the symbol (-).Clearly, the students considered other devices as reference in their first interaction. Both artifacts werecompared with a traditional Laptop ou PC ( 1 ) and the iPad with a mobile phone ( 2 ) – referred to as “a bigiPhone” by some students – on identifyind affordances and also on declaring their first impressions (i.e., big,light and agile for the iPad and heavy, malleable, and flexible for the Tablet-PC).The interaction with the iPad created expectations and curiosity. It may explain why the iPad had astronger influence in the Tablet PC analysis than the opposite ( 3 ). Some affordances of the Tablet-PC wereobserved to be more frequent when the iPad was analyzed first. This fact, in addition to the number ofidentified affordances of the Tablet-PC that explicitly compared it with the iPad, was not noticed on the iPadanalysis when the Tablet-PC was analyzed first.188