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The quality of an object that allows or encourages a user to perform an action
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The quality of an object that allows or encourages a user to perform an action
On a door, the shape of the handle, or push-plate, tells you how to open it – whether to pull or push; whether to turn a handle. In a document, a single large heading tells you where to start reading.
In a form, the size and shape of an answer space tells you whether to tick, sign or write a sentence.
Documents suffer from poor affordance when page breaks occur inappropriately (for example, when the topic appears to have finished but has not) or where hierarchies of headings are not distinguishable.
The term ‘affordance’ was originally introduced by the psychologist James J Gibson whose theories suggest that people actively seek meaning in their environment, and look for ‘action possibilities’. More recently it has been associated with the psychologist and usability expert Don Norman, whose Psychology of Everyday Things became a best seller.
Gibson, James J. (1979), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, ISBN 0-89859-959-8
Norman, Donald (1988) The Psychology of Everyday Things, ISBN 0-465-06710-7. Later editions are titled The Design of Everyday Things.