Affordance and the Value of Housing

1. Affordance and the Value of Housing • Paull Robathan • paull2.Robathan@live.uwe.ac.uk • 07977 471962

2. Affordance? • A term invented by JJ Gibson in the 1970s • Now much loved by Robotics • Vital to understand the interaction between people and things • A link between housing and health, education, development, ageing, employment – social value

4. Affordance • James Jerome Gibson (1979) originally defined Affordance • The affordances of the environment • are what it offers the animal, • what it provides or furnishes, • either for good or ill.

5. Value • The Oxford English Dictionary defines Value as • The regard that something is held to deserve; • the importance, worth, or usefulness of something:

6. Affordance and Value • "the value of a well-designed object is when it has such a rich set of affordances that people who use it can do things with it that the designer never imagined.” • Don Norman 1984

7. Social Value of Housing • The top five determinants of people • wanting to move home are: • 1. Lack of space • 2. Neighbour noise • 3. Local vandalism • 4. Street noise • 5. Having a garden • Fujiwara, HACT 2013 • 6

8. Child development • Affordances which according to Gibson (1986/1979)refer to the functionally significant properties of the environment provide a psychologically relevant concept for the analysis of the evolving child-environment relationship • marketta kytta 2002

9. Ageing in the Home • The inter-relationship of the affordance of • housing as people age and a • property’s affordability to enhance affordance • has not been considered by policy makers. • McKenzie and Jeffersen 2006

11. Development of the Affordances in the Home Environment for Motor Development Development–Infant Scale • Researchers are becoming increasingly interested in the longitudinal effects of the home environment on the motor development of • high-risk infants. • By clarifying the correlations • between elements in the home and motor development, • the instrument could have clinical significance for early intervention. • For example, infants at risk could have their home assessed • (screened) to determine and maximize appropriate intervention • strategies. Such strategies could include home modification and • parental education. • cacola et al 2011

12. Interrelationship between health and environment • Arguably, • a good deal of social epidemiology and the • social sciences and health has become • concerned with the ways in which • behaviour and other aspects of human • activity are enabled or constrained by • particular environment • Dunn 2011

13. Exaggerated affordances • The term “affordances” came to be used in interaction design to indicate a visual cue to indicate the proper way for a user to interact with a device. • That scoop under your door handle is an affordance, telling you where your fingers go in a visual language • AWOLTrends 2011

14. Providing people with good quality homes generates social value; it is beyond argument. • But maybe because of this, as a sector we’ve taken that assumption for granted, and not done as much as we might have to actively substantiate and evidence what that value actually is, and the ways in which it is delivered. • http://www.hact.org.uk/blog/2013/04/03/rethinking-housing-and-social-value#sthash.2zVKBK89.dpuf