Applications of affordance and cognitive ergonomics in virtual design: A digital camera as an illustrative case

Affordance-based design (ABD) plays an important role in identifying interactions, especially effortless ones, between users and artifacts. Cognitive ergonomics extends our understanding of this effortless interaction. This study combines the two design methodologies together in order to reduce cognitive friction in using digital products. The design process of a compact digital camera is selected as a case study that includes the design of the physical shape for a camera and of its user interface. In designing a product shape, a design toolbox was developed that integrated a modified multi-objective genetic algorithm and the ABD, which was named as affordance-based interactive genetic algorithm. Using this toolbox and interactive user feedback, the camera design evolves toward a product that better satisfies the users. User interfaces (UIs) including linear and elliptic layouts were subsequently designed based on cognitive ergonomics. A predictive tool of UI, the Cog Tool, was used to evaluate the performance of skilled users on a given task by correlating the overall task completion time. Finally, this research has the potential to not only effectively address the shortcomings of the design of consumer electronics but also enrich the generation of design solutions during the preliminary design phase of such products.