Can We Afford It? Issues in Designing Transparent Technologies

Situated Action claims that action is guided by an environment featuring objects, including technologies, whose use is transparent to us. Work on affordances perceived properties of objects which, in the context of a given course of action, tell us directly what those objects are for helps explain this. It is argued that an affordance helps make a technology transparent because it is a function which has become enculturated; that is, it has overlearned, shared significance for action. However, sometimes technologies feature functions beyond what we can easily call affordances, which are less culturally familiar to us. This paper gives examples of such functions; considers how technology functions, including affordances, become enculturated; and looks at implications for designing transparent technologies.