Research On The Design Of Aging Smart Kitchen Appliances Based On Affordance Theory

With the increasing aging of the population and the continuous emergence of scientific and technological products,the obstacles to the use of intelligent products faced by the elderly are issues that designers and the whole society need to pay attention to.The outline of the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" proposed that in order to implement the national strategy of actively responding to the aging of the population,promote the coordinated development of the aging cause and industry,and constantly meet the growing demand of the elderly for healthy elderly care.In 2021,the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also explicitly required that the website and APP should be "aged" and barrier-free before the end of September of the same year.Therefore,it is of great theoretical significance and application value to carry out research on aging design of current intelligent products to ensure the quality of life of the elderly.In this paper,the micro-steaming and baking machine is used as the research carrier for aging design,and the research is carried out under the guidance of the affordance theory.Firstly,the affordance evaluation model of the micro-steam and roast integrated machine is built based on the affordance elements extracted from the classic literature.Through the affordance measurement experiment of the youth and the elderly,it is found that the affordance awareness of the micro-steam and roast integrated machine varies greatly among different groups.Through the interview and post-test,it is concluded that the problems of the affordance of the micro-steam and roast integrated machine and the root causes affecting the user experience of the elderly,including the complexity of the interface information There are many problems such as inconvenient hardware operation.Put forward some design principles to improve the use efficiency and experience of the elderly,including the principles of easy learning,visibility,and easy operation.Secondly,referring to the hierarchical theory of affordance,the functional analysis of the micro-steaming and baking machine and the extraction of the behavior of the elderly users are carried out.The physical interaction points and cognitive interaction points in the human-computer interaction are presented in the form of FTIM matrix,and the 11 affordance including the visibility and accessibility of the micro-steaming and baking machine are identified.Then,the factor extraction and component determination are carried out,and the operational affordance,functional affordance,physical affordance and information affordance are refined,The above four affordance attributes affect the user’s awareness of the affordance of the product.Finally,the mapping relationship between various affordance and design features of the micro-steam-baking integrated machine was completed.The design practice was carried out with reference to the discovery of the previous problems,and two design schemes of the micro-steam-baking integrated machine were obtained.The affordance of the micro-steam-baking integrated machine was scored and evaluated with the Likert scale method,which verified the rationality and superiority of the scheme.Based on literature review,this study systematically clarifies the research process and evaluation methods for product affordance design.Through the case study of the micro steaming and baking integrated machine,it proves the positive significance of using affordance theory to design for aging,and also provides some ideas for the design and development of elderly products.