Much of the discussion about user experience design is focused on use, but there are additional issues to consider. In particular, issues of meaning. John will present the concept of Cultural Affordances—qualities of objects that help people to understand through the frame of their own past experience—and discuss the ways that we as designers can use cultural affordances to more effectively design for our audience.

1. Cultural Affordances
"
@jeanphony"
designissocial.com
@momentdesign"
momentdesign.com

2. It’s not rocket science. It’s social science – the
science of understanding people’s needs and
their unique relationship with art, literature,
history, music, work, philosophy, community,
technology and psychology. The act of design is
structuring and creating that balance.
— Clement Mok

3. Examples

6. Don't get so far ahead of the parade that no one
knows you're in it.
— John Naisbitt

7. Designing new products
"

8. The narrative of history informs us that new
forms of social organization trail in the wake of
new technology. And when disequilibrium
between new technology and the prevailing social
structure exists then cognitive dissonance
ensues."
— Educators Point the Way Toward Decentralized, Networked
Learning, PBS Media Shift

10. "
"
skeuomorph

11. "
"
skeuomorph

12. Skeuomorphs are created because the future is
built out of the present
— Garnet Hertz

14. We understood that people had already become
comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need
physical buttons, they understood the benefits, so
there was an incredible liberty in not having to
reference the physical world so literally.
— Jony Ive

15. Skeuomorphs visibly testify to the social or
psychological necessity for innovation to be
tempered by replication... [they] look to the past
and future, simultaneously reinforcing and
undermining both…
— Katherine Hayles

18. Skeuomorphs are a type of
Cultural Affordance…

22. Photo: Cadillac

24. Products play a social role in
our lives, whether we are
using them or not.

26. Designers work the scene of technological
emergence. They hack the present to create the
conditions for the future.
— Anne Balsamo

29. Products play a social role in
our lives, whether we are
using them or not.

30. Photo: mnr.onthescene

32. Photo: Lunar Design

33. Why should you care?
"

35. Ethnography
Some people (they are wrong) say design is about
solving problems. Obviously designers do solve
problems, but then so do dentists. Design is about
cultural invention.
— Jack Schulze
Photo: flickr/akeg

36. Bigger, wickeder problems
"

37. Ethnography
ethnography

38. Ethnography
ethnography

39. While ethnography often includes a description of
the activities and practices of those studied, it is
more importantly an attempt to interpret and give
meaning to those activities.
– Jeanette Blomberg

40. @epiconference"
epiconference.com/2014

41. Critical Design uses speculative design proposals
to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions
and givens about the role products play in
everyday life. It is more of an attitude than
anything else, a position rather than a method.
– Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby
critical design

42. critical design

43. Critical Design uses speculative design proposals
to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions
and givens about the role products play in
everyday life. It is more of an attitude than
anything else, a position rather than a method.
— Anthony Dunne

44. @dcrit"
dcrit.sva.edu

45. The slow development of criticism within design
may in fact be related to the very concept of
‘Good Design,’ which traditionally has prioritized
rationalism, functionalism, and aesthetics over a
deeper recognition of the broader cultural and
contextual implications of design.
— Design criticism for the 21st century, Core 77

46. Thank you.
"
@jeanphony"
designissocial.com
@momentdesign"
momentdesign.com
@dcrit"
dcrit.sva.edu
@epiconference"
epiconference.com/2014

47. I have great admiration for designers for many
reasons, but when called upon to defend how
they create value for the corporation, they could
have said, “Without us, you don’t have access to
culture.”
— Grant McCracken
But they haven’t.