Teaching Affordances: Challenges and Mitigations when integrating the Mechanisms and Conditions framework in HCI

TY - GEN

T1 - Teaching Affordances

T2 - 6th EduCHI Symposium on HCI Education, EduCHI 2024

AU - Frich, Jonas

AU - Hansen, Lone Koefoed

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 Owner/Author.

PY - 2024/6

Y1 - 2024/6

N2 - Understanding that not all users are the same is a foundational principle in teaching Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Learning to recognize how the diversity of users and their circumstances condition their experience of interacting with computers is essential in educating reflective, effective, and user-centric HCI professionals. Within this field, the term affordance has been a both heralded and contested term for years, but remains important. A recent contribution to the discussions is the Mechanism and Conditions Framework by Jenny Davis that productively nuances the term. However, translating the framework into a context of HCI education presents itself with a set of challenges. In this paper, we present insights from teaching Davis' framework to over 500 university students within a constructivist/socio-cultural tradition of HCI. Our work articulates pedagogical strategies that enhance students' understanding of context-specific analyses of user interfaces and in so doing it advances the HCI affordance discourse. By integrating theoretical critique and educational practice, we aim to aid the spread of the mechanisms and conditions framework among future HCI professionals.

AB - Understanding that not all users are the same is a foundational principle in teaching Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Learning to recognize how the diversity of users and their circumstances condition their experience of interacting with computers is essential in educating reflective, effective, and user-centric HCI professionals. Within this field, the term affordance has been a both heralded and contested term for years, but remains important. A recent contribution to the discussions is the Mechanism and Conditions Framework by Jenny Davis that productively nuances the term. However, translating the framework into a context of HCI education presents itself with a set of challenges. In this paper, we present insights from teaching Davis' framework to over 500 university students within a constructivist/socio-cultural tradition of HCI. Our work articulates pedagogical strategies that enhance students' understanding of context-specific analyses of user interfaces and in so doing it advances the HCI affordance discourse. By integrating theoretical critique and educational practice, we aim to aid the spread of the mechanisms and conditions framework among future HCI professionals.

KW - affordances

KW - frameworks

KW - HCI teaching

KW - UI analysis

KW - user interface

U2 - 10.1145/3658619.3658631

DO - 10.1145/3658619.3658631

M3 - Article in proceedings

AN - SCOPUS:85195521604

SP - 1

EP - 8

BT - EduCHI 2024

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

CY - New York

Y2 - 5 June 2024 through 7 June 2024

ER -