At the core of this thesis lies the concept of triggers and how a trigger’s general purpose is to raise attention to something. We discuss the similarities of triggers, entry points, and affordances in terms of medium dependency and information value, and how they can co-exist. As a basis of our trigger discussion we consider active and passive attention along with the use of tools as triggers. A number of problems are identified in trigger use, including continuous or discrete triggers and information value. Finally, suggestions are made regarding the handling of triggers, entry points, and affordances from a designer’s point of view. We discuss and suggest that triggers and their contextual elements can be handled and designed on the basis of their type, information demand, cognitive congeniality, and characteristics.
Key words: Trigger, entry point, affordance, cognitive congeniality, attention, task transformations, information demand, medium dependency, information value.