What is an affordance?

Understanding what affordances are and how they help map people’s mental models to a product is key to good design. But if you are like a lot of my students, the concept of an affordance is easier said than done to understand.

First, I would recommend you read chapter 1 of Don Norman’s Design of Everyday Things. He does a very good job of detailing what an affordance is, but even after I assign this reading and go over it myself, many students struggle to understand what an affordance is.

The proper discoverability and usability of affordances and signifiers is a key part of my guidelines for thoughtful product design. If you don’t understand what affordances are and how to utilize them, you won’t be able to design products that are usable and good. I’m going to try my best to explain what an affordance is here, but if you have further questions, send me a note on Twitter.

An affordance is not a feature.

A feature may rely on an affordance to work, but a feature itself is not an affordance. Many students and beginning designers make this mistake.

Affordances are relationships between a physical object or a digital one and a person. Affordances help determine how an object can be used. The key is that affordances are relationships.