Role of Affordances in Digital Transformation and Internet of Things

Digital Transformation (DT) and Internet of Things (IoT) are pushing us to new frontiers of human-computer interaction. In the new world of smart objects and digital-first business strategies, we have been seeing the fields of design, engineering, psychology, and sociology collide and come together to offer innovative experiences with products and services. Companies are actively engaging principles of Industrial Design to address the subtle nuances of UX and offer deeply engaging and even habit forming products and services. This led to the rise of the moniker #DesignInTech. These days, Digital strategy is the strategy to win users and find business growth.

Like in all human-product interactions, in Digital Transformation and IoT initiatives too, providing the right mix of affordances is very crucial to the success or failure of these initiatives. The subject of affordance has historically been the forte of industrial design. Over time, the concept has seeped into software products and IT. Now it is further permeating into organizational design, business strategy and business processes as well.

What is affordance?

Affordance is a fundamental aspect of interaction design. Be it software design or physical object design or even business design, the designers explicitly or implicitly think about how the users and actors of the system behave/perform based on various influencing factors (stimuli). Depending upon the specific application of the concept and the context, the path to arriving at the right set of affordances could vary. When affordances are done right, the product/service/business process (referred to as P-S-BP, hence forth) is a pleasure to work with. When done poorly, the usability and adoption of the P-S-BP suffers greatly.

Affordance in DT/IoT

Most Digital Transformation and IoT initiatives entail re-design of user experience and business processes to support the experience. For example:

• A retail bank may develop a mobile app that provides a unified, consistent, omni-channel across all their business lines that this customer does business with.
• A retail store may seamlessly blend mobile, desktop and in-store experience of the customer as they move across the channels during their buying journey.
• A supply chain manager may leverage IoT technologies to get real-time movement of materials in real-time. They system may have capabilities to trigger automatic workflows and notifications based on certain criteria

The above three use cases are not entirely new. However, recent technological advances over the past decade (mobile, cloud, sensors, etc) gave rise to the adoption of cross-functional initiatives that span both operational technologies (OT) and information technologies (IT) systems. Such initiatives are harder to implement as they are not just technology problems. They span people and business processes as well. Digital Transformation and IoT implementations entail strong vertical integration of the entire interaction chain. Therefore, they warrant different set of knowledge, best practices and mindset, for an organization to be successful. This complexity paved the way for the role of the Chief Digital Transformation Officer .

In my experience in working with the customers implementing Digital Transformation and IoT initiatives, I found that when organizations have an understanding of the concept of affordances (and Design Thinking process), it provides an important framework to analyze, design and implement these complex, vertically integrated, technology-led business solutions. Good affordances mitigate the risk of adoption. I cannot think of a single successful vertical integration that did not have these aspects right.

Causes of Poor Affordances

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort (friction) that arises in user mind when there is a delta between what the user knows (knowledge), how the system ‘appears’ to perform and the expected outcome of it. The goal of good design is to minimize (eliminate) cognitive dissonance. Solving for cognitive dissonance is a broad topic, and one could easily write a book on it! However, here are the core reasons we keep finding confusing interaction designs. Misunderstanding and/or applying them in the wrong context is a common cause of poorly designed systems.

• Constraints?—?All P-S-BPs have physical and logical constraints that the designer and the user need to work with. By working with constraints effectively, it leads to great UI. Many of the minimalistic designs pose good constraints on the user to elevate their ease-of-use experience.
• Conventions?—?Mixing up a convention with an affordance is a common faux pas of designers. Conventions are learned from users’ previous experiences. Whereas affordances are designed. They are often the range of possibilities, the users of the P-S-BP have. Both of them are related, but different.
• Coherence?—?Good coherence happens when there is right level of abstraction, encapsulation, atomicity, consistency and fluidity between the various functionalities. Poor coherence leads to poor affordance.
• Discoverability?—?Affordances are the range of possibilities the user has at that point. However, if the possibilities are not obvious/visible to the user, it leads to bad experience.
• Environment?—?Incorrect assumptions or understanding of the environmental factors, dispositions and their effectivities, often lead to misconstrued actualities, as perceived by the user. In almost all the cases, the environment provides the perceived affordances for the user.

In addition, the above mistakes happen for three reasons:

• Engineering vs Design mindset?—?There is a world of difference between products produced with engineering culture vs industrial design culture. If you compare UX of enterprise software UI from 90s to today, the difference in the philosophy of usability, aesthetics and user engagement is unmistakable. Fortunately, Apple taught us how design can transform our lives, and the rest is history!
• Timing/budget pressures?—?With these pressures, even with the best of the intentions, implementations can be subpar. Most of us experience this at some time or the other!
• User experience is not of highest importance?—?Contrary to popular belief, many P-S-BP are not necessarily optimized for user value or experience as they may be other motivations involved!

Avoiding Poor Affordances

There are two effective ways to mitigate poor affordances. In most cases, both are used in tandem.

• Empathy?—?‘Stand in the shoes’ of the user and go through the complete set of decisions and actions for the end-to-end usage scenario. Identify and document areas of ‘friction’ and psychological safety. This is often done during the prototype development phase. This approach distills down a good narrower set of options/features to have in the prototype.

Note: It is very important to understand the current psychological status quo (and underlying incentives) of the user. If the new system is a substantial jump from what they are used to, then the onboarding process should factor in this chasm and develop strategies to help the user make the leap and while providing the needed psychological safety (for them to attempt the jump to begin with). If this chasm is not addressed properly, it leads to the user rejecting the new P-S-BP.

• Prototyping and Usability Testing?—?Despite employing empathy and Design Thinking process, it is still challenging for the designers of P-S-BP to anticipate all the possible interaction paths the actor may have (and what they may accept or reject). The best way to be sure, is to leverage Lean Methodologies and employ iterative build-measure-learn cycles.

For the readers that practice agile software development, the above process may be a no-brainer. Outside of IT and software though, the Agile principles and methodologies are not all that common. They can however be applied to domains like product design, process design, org design and business model design as well?—?make rapid progress and get the right traction.

Conclusion

Understanding the role and importance of affordances is just one aspect of the design continuum. Design is not just the forte of the product teams. It applies to all of us. I encourage you to do more research on how this concept can be applied in your day-today work to minimize cognitive dissonance in your Digital Transformation and IoT implementations.

P.S: A version of this post was originally published on my blog