UX Design Glossary: How to Use Affordances in User Interfaces
updated 10mo ago
UX Design Glossary: How to Use Affordances in User Interfaces
An affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used.
from The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman
Affordances represent the possibilities in the world for how an agent (a person, animal, or machine) can interact with something. Some affordances are perceivable, others are invisible.
from The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman
- When done well, both giving and taking create what psychologists call affordances: features of the environment that allow you to do something. Physical affordances are things like stairs and handles and benches. Conversational affordances are things like digressions and confessions and bold claims that beg for a rejoinder. What matters most, then, ... See more
from Good Conversations Have Lots of Doorknobs by Substack
nicole added
Think about affordance cues when you design. By giving people cues about what they can do with a particular object, you make it more likely that they will take that action.
from 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) by Weinschenk Susan
Affordances determine what actions are possible. Signifiers communicate where the action should take place. We need both.
from The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
Eventually I gave up: designers needed a word to describe what they were doing, so they chose affordance. What alternative did they have? I decided to provide a better answer: signifiers.
from The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman
the internet is now so embedded within the human developmental process.
it's not merely a collection of servers and clients.
its evolutions shape us with each passing generation.
in turn, we shape its evolution, feeding into what it has fed us.
it follows from 4E cogsci that app/site interfaces will drastically affect our cognitive development. at leas
... See moremk. (reflections of -i-) and added