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Representational affordances in design, with examples from analogy making and optimization

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Abstract

Affordances in design can be understood as the action possibilities of a user interacting with a designed object. In this paper, we develop the notion of “representational affordances” to denote affordances provided by design representations to the designer as the “user” of these representations. A major characteristic of representational affordances is that they do not have to rely on existing representations but can drive the construction of new representations that may then afford different design actions. We describe representational affordances ontologically, proposing three affordance types: reflexive, reactive and reflective. We illustrate them with examples of analogy making and optimization.

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Acknowledgments

This research is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. SBE-915482. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. NICTA is funded by the Australian Government as represented by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and the Australian Research Council through the ICT Centre of Excellence program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study and Volgenau School of Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    John S. Gero

  2. University of Technology, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    John S. Gero

  3. NICTA, Australia, and School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Udo Kannengiesser

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  1. John S. Gero
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  2. Udo Kannengiesser
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Correspondence to John S. Gero.

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Gero, J.S., Kannengiesser, U. Representational affordances in design, with examples from analogy making and optimization. Res Eng Design 23, 235–249 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-012-0128-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-012-0128-y

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