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Affordance 101: From Things to Screens to Things

January 17, 2018
by Adam Churchill

We're adding Andrew Hinton's Affordance 101: From Things to Screens to Things to UIE's All You Can Learn Library. This seminar recording is 40 minutes long.

 

Affordance is a key to understanding how your users make sense of every interaction you design in a product or service. Whenever your users don’t understand an interaction the way you assumed they would, chances are affordance is part of the underlying problem.

Just understanding what affordance is can be a challenge. The word “affordance” has come to mean different things to different people, causing a bit of confusion. Thankfully, Andrew Hinton can return us to the true meaning of affordance and demonstrate how it differs from signifiers.

In Affordance 101, Andrew uses everyday examples to explain the concept of affordance, its background, and how it applies to your design work.

  • Effectively define affordance and its importance
  • Distinguish between affordance and signifiers
  • Recognize how technology affects affordances and signifiers
  • Use signifiers to clarify your design for your users

Provide Context to Your Users