USER INTERFACE DESIGN INFORMED BY AFFORDANCES

AND NORMS CONCEPTS

Vânia Paula de Almeida Neris and M. Cecília C. Baranauskas

Institute of Computing, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Av. Albert Einstein, 1251 Campinas, SP, Brazil

Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction, User interface design, Organizational Semiotics, Semantic Analysis, Norm

Analysis.

Abstract: Human interaction with Information and Communication Technologies relies on the manipulation of signs

represented in different interface elements. While designing interfaces, several decisions may be taken as

which interface elements will be added, where, which size, shape or color must have. More than context

knowledge (as who is the user, devices’ characteristics and environmental conditions), information from the

system domain should be used to support interface design. This paper presents preliminary results of an

exploratory study about how affordances and norms may inform user interface design decisions. The results

suggest that some categories of affordances are represented in the interface by similar types of signs and are

placed in specific positions. Moreover, MONA, a tool to help designers to structure user interfaces and

determine the behavior of each element using norms, is presented.

1 INTRODUCTION

The pervasiveness of Information and

Communication Technologies (ICT) in our daily

lives emphasizes the necessity of technical systems

aligned with people’s intention, beliefs and social

commitments. Therefore, the design of these

systems demands a deep understanding about the

complex interaction process between humans and

ICT. This understanding is only possible with a

socio-technical perspective that considers ICT as

part of reality, which is socially constructed.

Semiotics has been effectively used as a

theoretical framework for supporting the interaction

design (e.g. Nadin, 1988; Andersen, 1990; deSouza,

2005). Interaction between users and the technical

system can be considered a sharing-sign

phenomenon influenced by several factors as

familiarity with devices, intention of use, affective

issues, devices’ characteristics and environmental

conditions. Such phenomenon, analyzed only

according to the perspective of engineering, has

been interpreted as purely syntactic. The analysis

using Semiotics reveals the primary function of

computer systems as vehicles of signs and supplies

an adequate vocabulary that makes possible the

understanding of computer systems in terms of other

types of sign systems (Nadin, 1988).

Organizational Semiotics (OS), in particular, is a

discipline that explores the use of signs and their

effects on social practices (Stamper et al., 1988; Liu,

2000). OS provides a background that embodies

knowledge and support collaboration and reflection

among people from the different disciplines

involved in interaction design (Baranauskas and

Bonacin, 2008). In addition, OS supplies methods

and artifacts that have been successfully used to

clarify the design problem, extend context

knowledge, formalize requirements and evaluate the

design solution (cf. Liu et al., 1998; Bonacin et al.,

2006; Rambo et al., 2009; Neris et al., 2010).

The human interaction with ICT relies on

interfaces that allow the manipulation of signs which

may be represented in different forms as text,

pictures, sound and video, to name the currently

popular ones. While designing interfaces, several

decisions may be taken as which interface elements

will be created to enable some type of interaction,

where, which size, shape or color must have, among

other characteristics. These decisions are generally

left on the designers’ hands or on user interface

patterns detached from the application domain. Neris

et al. (2008) have shown that the users’ knowledge

about the domain and their digital literacy highly

influences the interaction. When users know about

the system domain and the system design reflects the

133

de Almeida Neris V. and Baranauskas M.

USER INTERFACE DESIGN INFORMED BY AFFORDANCES AND NORMS CONCEPTS.

DOI: 10.5220/0003269701330140

In Proceedings of the Twelfth Inter national Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations (ICISO 2010), page

ISBN: 978-989-8425-26-3

domain characteristics, the interaction process is

facilitated. Therefore, we argue that more than

context knowledge (as who is the user, devices’

characteristics and environmental conditions),

information about the system domain are influential

for interface design decisions.

This paper presents an exploratory study to

investigate how the concepts of affordances and

norms may inform user interface design (UID). 17

designers were involved in a case study and 7 web

design proposals were analyzed. The domain was

modeled based on two methods from OS, Semantic

Analysis Method (SAM) and Norm Analysis

Method (NAM). Affordances and norms from the

domain modeling were compared to those direct or

indirectly present in the final UID. The preliminary

results suggest a relation between some specific

affordances and the place and presentation format of

related elements in the user interface. Finally, a tool

to structure interfaces is proposed and the interface

elements characteristics are formalized by norms.

The text is organized as follows: Section 2 presents

the background concepts; Section 3 presents results

of the case study to explore the relation of

affordances and norms with UID; Section 4 presents

a norm modeler tool as part of the process of

constructing UID based on the concepts of

affordances and norms; Section 5 concludes.

2 AFFORDANCES AND NORMS

The concept of affordance was initially created by

the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977,

1979) as a word for the behavior of an organism

made available that “implies the complementarities

of the organism and its environment”. As Gibson

defined it, “the affordances of the environment are

what it offers the animal, what it provides or

furnishes, either for good or ill”. For Norman (1988,

2008), Gibson invented the word affordance “to

refer to a relationship: the actions possible by a

specific agent on a specific environment”.

According to Stamper (1988, 1996), the word

affordance in Gibson’s theory is related to the

invariants we perceive that are significant for

physical and biological reasons.

The term affordance started to be widely used in

design after Norman’s book (1988), in which he

proposes the use of perceived affordances and the

“thing” actual properties. According to him,

affordances provide strong clues about how the thing

could be possibly used, e.g. “plates are for pushing”

or “slots are for inserting things”. He argues that in

graphical, screen-based interfaces, all that the

designer has available is control over perceived

affordances. The computer system, with its

keyboard, display screen, pointing device and

selection buttons affords pointing, touching, looking,

and clicking on every pixel of the display screen.

However, Norman clarifies later on (2004), even if

users can click anytime and everywhere on an

interface, it is strong to state that a graphical object

on the screen “affords clicking”. He emphasizes that

the question is: “Does the user perceive that clicking

on that location is a meaningful, useful action to

perform?”

Stamper’s (1988) extension to the concept of

affordances better helps us to answer this question.

According to Stamper et al. (2004): “All organisms,

including human agents construct their perceptions

of the only world they can know through their

actions; they have to discover (or be taught, or

inherit by instinct) what invariant repertoires of

behavior the world affords them (= the affordances);

then they populate their reality with those

affordances that help them to survive”. This

perspective considers that the reality is socially

constructed and relates affordances with patterns of

behavior arisen from social interactions. Therefore,

every affordance presupposes meaning and

intention, what guides for example the click on an

interface element.

OS proposes a method to support domain

modeling by its affordances. SAM supports the

analysis, specification and representation of a social

system and is divided into four phases: problem

definition, candidate affordance generation,

candidate grouping and ontology charting (Liu,

2000). Considering a statement that defines the

(design) problem, the main affordances in the

domain are elicited. SAM also considers the

concepts of agents and ontological dependencies.

Agents are a special type of affordance which refers

to those who are capable of assuming

responsibilities. Ontological dependencies are links

between affordances or agents representing that the

element in the right can only exist during the

existence of the element in the left. After identifying

the affordances and agents and grouping them (if

they have the same meaning), the ontology chart is

drawn.

OS approach rescues the original sense of

ontology as part of the philosophy that studies the

nature of reality. It adopts a social-subjectivism

stance and an agent-in-action perspective for

ontology; i.e. each word or expression used is a

name for patterns of behavior in the set of actions

ICISO 2010 - International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations

134

and events which agents experience. Therefore, the

ontology chart is like a “snapshot” of the reality

regarding that specific domain in which the

prospective (software) system will be included.

Moreover, the dynamic behavior in that reality can

be modeled using norms.

Norms are the rules which determine how social

organisms interact and control affordances (Stamper

1993; Stamper et al., 2000). They are related to how

people behave, think, make judgments and perceive

the world. Every norm can be written as IF

<condition> THEN <consequence>. Behavioral

norms, in particular, can be expressed in an extended

format: WHENEVER <state> IF <condition> THEN

TO <action>. With this last structure, it is possible

to complement an ontology chart by specifying how

agents deal with affordances. Indeed, affordances by

themselves express perceptual norms. They concern

the ways in which we divide up the world into the

phenomena to which we attach names. We can only

represent norms explicitly when we have words to

represent the perceptions underlying them (Stamper

et al., 2000). Moreover, evaluative and cognitive

norms also compose a social psychological

taxonomy of norms.

NAM consists of 4 steps for eliciting and

formalizing norms: responsibility analysis, proto-

norm analysis, trigger analysis and detailed norm

specification (cf. Liu, 2000). Each step assists the

identification of parts of the norm. In special, the

responsibility analysis aims at assigning the agents

in charge for each action. The trigger analysis focus

on the conditions that should happen thus the action

will be performed.

Both, affordances and norms, are powerful

concepts to describe a domain and have been used to

support the design of interactive systems (Bonacin,

2005; Neris and Baranauskas, 2009). Nevertheless, it

is still necessary to investigate whether these

concepts may support interface design decisions.

The next section presents an exploratory study in

this direction.

3 SAM AND NAM SUPPORTING

UID

An exploratory study analyzed 7 user interfaces

from prototypes developed by 17 (prospective)

designers from the postgraduate course in Computer

Science at UNICAMP-Brazil. The prototypes were

developed following PLuRaL - a framework for the

design of tailorable user interfaces based on

Organizational Semiotic concepts (Neris and

Baranauskas, 2010). PLuRaL is organized in 3

pillars: the 1st one brings out the signs of interest in

the domain (being them related to users, devices or

environment) and formalizes non-functional

requirements that the tailorable system should cope

with. The 2

pillar benefits from SAM and NAM

and allows a consistent view about the domain,

including the norms that govern the agents’

behavior, and assist the formalization of functional

requirements. In the 3rd pillar, the tailorable design

solution is build up and a norm-based structure

formalizes the system tailorable behavior.

Designers worked in 7 groups (4 with 3

participants each, 2 with 2 participants each and 1

participant worked alone) and were free to propose a

system design within the context of service

applications for the Brazilian user. The systems

chosen consider different domains: public drugstore,

Portuguese learning support, social network about

books, poll system for digital TV, traffic awareness,

job guide and interaction monitoring system.

In this study, the ontology charts generated in

PLuRaL’s 2

pillar were compared to the final user

interfaces as described in section 3.1. The results

observed and some preliminary conclusions are

presented in section 3.2.

3.1 Method

The analysis aimed at evaluating if (and how)

affordances and norms that represent the domain

were expressed in the final user interfaces.

Therefore, the adopted method considered the

following steps: (1) the affordances represented in

each ontology chart (an example is shown in Figure

1a) were divided into 4 categories: people

(considering the roles derived from the affordance

“person”), institutions (agents which are not person

or person’s roles), actions (affordances expressed by

verbs) and substantives (affordances expressed by

nouns); (2) Each final user interface was inspected

and the main affordances expressed in the different

interaction areas were elicited; (3) The affordances

expressed in the interfaces were compared to those

from the ontology charts, considering position in the

interface and representation (which interface

element was used: icons, links, buttons etc), as

illustrated in Figure 1b.

USER INTERFACE DESIGN INFORMED BY AFFORDANCES AND NORMS CONCEPTS

135

Figure 1: (a) Ontology chart for a job guide domain. (b) Final user interface with main reflected affordances.

3.2 Preliminary Results

From the analysis of the ontology charts and user

interfaces, some quantitative data were obtained as

summarized in Table 1. Each line in the table

represents one of the seven prototypes analyzed. The

affordances in the ontology charts and user

interfaces were counted considering the criteria

expressed in section 3.1.

The first fact that can be observed (and was

already expected) is that the quantity of affordances

related to the domain in the user interface is smaller

than in the ontology chart. As the ontology chart

represents a domain, fraction of a reality, the

technical system can support only part of the actions

that the agents perform. However, in the user

interfaces other affordances, not related to the

domain, but related to the interface itself, emerge.

Figure 1b shows on the right some affordances that

were added in the interface to support the interaction

itself. They represent actions such as increase the

font size, change contrast or play a supportive video

or sound. Table 1 considers only affordances related

to the domain.

The affordances regarding people are essential to

clarify the responsibilities in the domain and support

the elicitation of the possible users. Though, they did

not appear explicitly in the interface. In most cases,

they represent the implicit agent interacting with the

system. The only 2 people (traffic agent guide and a

clinic attendant) that appear in the interfaces (as

ICISO 2010 - International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations

136

Table 1: Quantity of affordances related to the domain from the ontology chart vs. in the user interface.

Ontology chart User interface

people institutions actions substantives people institutions actions substantives

2 3 5 2 0 1 3 1

2 0 5 3 0 0 3 3

4 2 11 3 1 0 2 3

2 5 6 4 0 0 2 1

4 2 5 4 0 1 4 1

4 4 4 5 1 1 1 2

2 1 6 4 0 1 1 1

Figure 2: Mock-up of MONA.

pictures) were added to assist the users as elements

to activate help options or provide affective support.

Institutions, on the other hand, were represented

in the user interface; mostly by their logos and on

the left upper position or in the footer. However, the

number of institutions represented in the interfaces

could have been greater. Some representations for

institutions (as the traffic regulatory body or the

healthy ministry) were not added by the designers;

maybe because it was an academic exercise. In a real

life situation, as the services are supported by

governmental agencies, their logos should have been

placed.

The actions from the domain supported by the

system were mostly represented by links and buttons

(as look for, announce or comment). Moreover, they

were placed on the left hand side or in the middle

area (in the case of the main functionality), while the

actions related to the interface itself or affective

support were mainly placed on the right side. The

substantives were generally presented with the

actions; therefore on the left hand side or in the

middle. While on the left, they were represented by

text; but when in the middle, different types of signs

were used as icons and symbols, or more specifically

diagrams and emblems.

Regarding norms, two main types were specified

by designers: perceptual and behavioral norms. The

perceptual norms appear directly when thinking

about affordances. Each word chosen to form the

ontology chart represents how the domain is

perceived and in most cases, the same words

adopted in the chart were adopted in the interface.

However, sometimes designers selected other terms

(or even new terms show up), what suggests the

need of refining the chart. Thus, UID, supported by

information from the domain, not only benefits from

the use of significant terms but also helps in the

model refinement. This is an observation which

corroborates with an incremental process of building

the ontology diagram.

Deliberately, designers specified behavioral

norms, expressing the conditions and consequences

related to the actions presented in the ontology chart.

According to the designers, these norms were very

supportive to clarify the system functions and

assisted the specification of use cases. They

commented: “the use cases generation was really

immediate, as the two methods [SAM and NAM]

USER INTERFACE DESIGN INFORMED BY AFFORDANCES AND NORMS CONCEPTS

137

helped a lot to understand the problem and the

system” and “the ontology chart with norms really

helped to specify the use cases, e.g. actions and pre

and post-conditions”. However, this study did not

provide evidences that behavioral norms directly

supported decisions in the user interfaces. In

addition, further studies may aggregate evaluative

and cognitive norms to the investigation.

The preliminary observations suggest that some

categories of affordances are represented in the

interface by similar types of signs and are grouped in

specific areas (e.g. institutions by their logos in the

left upper side or in the footer; actions by textual

links or buttons in the left side or substantives in the

middle by different signs). Moreover, perceptual

norms supported design decisions regarding the

terms added to the interface. The next section

presents a tool to help designers to structure

interfaces and to define the behavior of each element

using norms. This tool added to an ontology chart

builder and NBIC (Bonacin and Baranauskas, 2005)

to support the construction of tailorable systems

from SAM and NAM.

4 MONA – A NORM MODELER

FOR USER INTERFACE

MONA (Portuguese acronym for norm modeler for

tailorable interfaces) is a tool that helps designers to

structure user interfaces based on the concept of

wireframes. It allows the representation of

interaction areas and support design consistency

through several interfaces. Figure 2 shows a mock-

up from MONA’s main interface. Designers can

specify the system being developed (e.g. Vila na

Rede - an inclusive social network system that

allows users to share products, services and ideas -

http://www.vilanarede.org.br) and the functionalities

being represented (e.g. comment_post). Some

interaction areas as well as some interaction

elements are available to compose the interface in a

drag and drop style. The different interfaces for each

functionality are drawn in individual tabs (e.g.

comment_screen1).

However, only drawings are not enough to

represent the diversity of facets a tailorable system

may have, hence a more formal approach needs to

be adopted. Once more, OS founded the solution and

the norm concept was applied. As norms express

how agents behave in society, the same structure

was adopted to model the behavior of tailorable

systems. An instance of the format proposed for

behavioral norms is suggested considering context,

functionality and interface elements, as follows:

WHENEVER (d, e, u) IF (f, r) THEN <system>

IS <deontic operator> TO show ∑(i, m)

where:

d: device, e: environment, u: user

f: functionality, r: representation

i: interface element, m: mode (position, size,

shape, color, type, instance)

The context is defined by a tuple formed by

device, environment and user characteristics. When

the condition is satisfied, i.e. the system starts a

specific functionality in a specific representation (as

the same functionality may have more than one user

interface), then the tailorable system must, may or

may not show a group of interface elements in a

certain mode. The proposed format allows modeling

a great variability of changes and designers can

specify since simple situations as “every time the

application is running on a cell phone, contrast

option should be on” to more complex ones

involving specific behavior of different interface

elements (whenever (Computer, in the office,

attendant) if (check appointment, appointment

report) then drugstore_system should show

[(language style, “formal_semantics.txt”); (logo,

Healthy ministry)]. With MONA, designers can

specify the behavior of each element by clicking on

the interface element and specifying the norm.

It is important to mention that, in OS, the

original concept of norms is related to the

organization behavior and the structure of behavioral

norms requires an agent (affordance with

responsibility) as the responsible for the action. The

same norm structure was adopted in MONA

intending to represent a certain behavior; in this

case, the system behavior. The software system is as

an agent that will display a set of interface elements

in a certain mode. This view considers the system as

an active artifact capable of doing tasks in different

contexts. However, it is known that the system

software is not an agent in the sense OS proposes,

since the responsibilities are always associated to the

human agents behind the system.

Using MONA, designers start structuring the

user interface from scratch. i.e. with no previous

support. However, considering the results presented

in section 3.2, MONA could support designers

considering information from the domain. Figure 3

shows a process which considers 2 other tools as

infra-structure: SONAR (Bonacin et al., 2004) and

NBIC/ICE (Bonacin and Baranauskas, 2005).

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Figure 3: Modules to help designers to consider information from the domain in UID.

SONAR is an ontology chart drawing tool. It allows

the specification of affordances, agents, roles,

ontological dependencies and the norms related to

them. In a drag and drop style, designers can

rearrange the elements and may evolve the chart.

SONAR also generates initial versions of UML class

diagrams from the ontology chart (Bonacin et al.,

2004). Adding a syntactic parser to MONA, which

may base the affordances classification as verbs and

substantives; it could suggest a first structuring for

the interface. People and institutions could be

directly obtained from the ontology chart.

MONA can export the interface structure and

norms expressing the elements behavior in a XML

format that can be read by the webservices offered

by the NBIC/ICE infra-structure. The NBIC (Norm

Based Interface Configurator) receives the norm

specification in Deontic logic, manages the norms

persistence, and also transforms them into a platform

specific language that can be interpreted by an

inference machine on ICE (Interface Configuration

Environment). Then, the ICE receives context

information from the application, evaluates the

norms related to context by using the inference

machine (JESS – JAVA rule engine) and returns to

the tailorable application an action plan with the

changes to be done.

As suggested by Figure 3, information from the

domain (modeled through SAM and NAM) supports

the interface structuring (suggesting interface

elements and position and also terms to be used)

directly influencing the technical system behavior.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presented preliminary results from an

exploratory study about affordances and norms

representing the application domain and user

interface design decisions. The results suggest that

some categories of affordances are represented in the

interface by similar types of signs and are placed in

specific positions. Moreover, perceptual norms

support design decisions regarding which terms may

be added to the interface. MONA, a tool to help

designers to structure user interfaces and determine

the behavior of each element using norms, was

presented. Moreover, the interface structuring of a

tailorable system was proposed based on

information from affordances and norms.

MONA mainly supports interaction designers in

their task of representing which are the interface

areas and respective interaction elements for a

tailorable design solution. MONA allows the

interaction designer to specify also the shape of

some interface elements when it is already known

(e.g. the logo of the site), although this is a task of

graphical designers.

As OS artifacts have been successfully used to

help several UID activities such as clarifying the

design problem, extending the context knowledge,

formalizing requirements and evaluating the design

solution, this paper advocates a possible support to

user interface structuring. Once it was a first

approach to investigate how affordances and norms

may inform UID, the study does not make any

assumption about the quality of the interfaces, which

can be assessed in future investigations. Moreover,

other types of norms may be studied specially

aiming at the elicitation of non-functional

requirements and their reflection on the user

interfaces.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is funded by FAPESP (#2006/54747-6)

and by Microsoft Research - FAPESP Institute for

IT Research (#2007/54564-1). The authors specially

thank the participants involved in the experimental

study (in the role of designers) and also the

colleagues from NIED, InterHAD, CenPRA, IC-

UNICAMP and IRC-University of Reading for

insightful discussion.

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139

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ICISO 2010 - International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations

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