My observation, (not stalking anyone really) was at my work study job at Stern. I work in the financial department out of anything else, and I was happily typing away trying to catch up on homework assignments, when a group of intellectuals came through the doors. I of course said good afternoon and proceeded to continue my typing. Now people who work at Stern and are professors at Stern are obviously brilliant people. People all around the world from oxford to Harvard come pass those glass doors by my little cubicle. However, these group of intellectuals, after they had finish their meeting in the conference room, were trying to lock the door of the conference room. I watched in awe and a little bit of laughter as I saw these group of smart and successful people all try to lock the door! In my mind I thought, “this can’t be too hard…like really guys”. Eventually after many attempts at trying to look the door with different types of keys, one person asked my supervisor on how to lock the door. She took out her keys, and in one swoop, the door was locked!
During this observation I realized that the group of intellectuals trying to open the door were all trying to lock the door at the same time. All trying to prove they could lock the door themselves. Also, the number of keys that was given to them, was ridiculous and that was obstacle that they had to encounter as well. Asking for help and maybe even in the future asking for the specific key of a room would be more beneficial than standing and fighting over who could lock the door first.
Furthermore, when I think of the affordance and the signifiers in my observation, I remember on how Don Norman of Design of Everyday Things defines affordances versus signifiers, “Affordances define what actions are possible. Signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptible signals of what can be done”. (Norman XV) I believe the affordance in this case was trying all the keys to unlock the door, an action that at the time was seen as the only possibility. The signifier would have to be the group of intellectuals looking at how each key was shaped and which ones could possibly be the key to lock the door.