Examining working memory load and congruency effects on affordances and conventions

Although there is a debate about whether designers should draw a distinction between perceptual affordances and cultural conventions, there are few behavioral studies. We examined the impact of working memory load and expected button-to-action mapping congruency on affordances and conventions. The f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of human-computer studies 2010-09, Vol.68 (9), p.561-571
Main Authors: Still, Jeremiah D., Dark, Veronica J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affordance
Applied sciences
Artificial intelligence
Computer science
control theory
systems
Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface
Convention
Exact sciences and technology
Interaction design
Software
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Summary:Although there is a debate about whether designers should draw a distinction between perceptual affordances and cultural conventions, there are few behavioral studies. We examined the impact of working memory load and expected button-to-action mapping congruency on affordances and conventions. The findings suggest both sides of the debate are correct. Learned conventions were found to structure responses towards expected actions, just like affordances, but affordance-based interactions were not affected by memory load while convention-based actions were. Therefore, designers ought to employ perceptual affordances when possible and when not feasible they ought to reuse established conventions. Additionally, evidence is presented that violating expected affordance-based and convention-based button-to-action mappings caused a similar performance cost. We believe that after the initial learning period, conventions play a critical role in the perception of a design’s available actions just as perceptual affordances do.
ISSN:1071-5819
1095-9300
DOI:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2010.03.003