The phrase "artifact functions" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts related to technology, software, or analysis where the roles or purposes of artifacts (such as documents, tools, or data) are being discussed.
Example: "The study focused on how different artifact functions impact user experience in software development."
Alternatives: "artifact roles" or "artifact purposes".
Basically, design knowledge can be classified into four categories: artifact functions, artifact behaviors, artifact structures, and the causalities among structures, behaviors and functions.
Recently, it has been suggested that abstract notions such as material properties and artifact functions should be learnt by going through a series of contextual experiences, from which generic characteristics can be derived that enable the learner to develop the more abstract notion.
(i) The structure of the child's concept of artifact function changes profoundly between ages 5 and 7.
(ii) This conceptual shift has a striking effect on problem-solving performance, i.e. the child's concept of artifact function appears to be deployed in problem solving.
We argue that the older children were slower to solve the problem when the typical function was primed because (i) their artifact concept plays a role in problem solving, and (ii) intended purpose is central to their concept of artifact function, but not to that of the younger children.
They suggest that the two aspects are 'tied up', so to speak, in the notion of artifact function.
Up till now there is no accepted general account of function that covers both the intentionality-based notion of artifact function and the non-intentional notion of biological function not to speak of other areas where the concept plays a role, such as the social sciences.
This conceptual connection between technological artifacts, functions and goals makes it hard to maintain that technology is value-neutral.
Design information captured by the repository can be divided into seven main categories of artifact-, function-, failure-, physical-, performance-, sensory- and media-related information types.
In "Archaeology as Anthropology," a paper that ushered in "processual archaeology," Lewis Binford (1962) reminded archaeologists that artifacts function not just in the sense of task performance but in social and ideological contexts as well.
There is a closely related concept of an artifact's function that is purposive: for example, when we say that moving the cursor is the function of the computer's mouse or trackpad we seem to mean that this is what it is for, that it is there in order to do this, that this is what its designers designed it to do.
