Have you ever heard the term affordance? If you haven’t, you’re not alone, but it’s an important design principle that e-learning designers need to understand. Affordances are an object’s cha...
Published 7 years ago
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Base on what Dan Norman wrote in his book (The Design of Everyday Things) we have two terms that describe objects.
Affordances define what actions are possible (It is a relation between object and a person (user) so for example a chair affords (“is for”) support and, therefore, affords sitting.
On the other hand signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptible signals of what can be done (chair's flat surface and a back support). Therefore signifiers are far more importance to designers than are affordances.
Hope that adds a little bit of a background to the article.
Affordances define what actions are possible (It is a relation between object and a person (user) so for example a chair affords (“is for”) support and, therefore, affords sitting.
On the other hand signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptible signals of what can be done (chair's flat surface and a back support). Therefore signifiers are far more importance to designers than are affordances.
Hope that adds a little bit of a background to the article.
I am reading this book right now! It was the first thing I thought of as I opened this article … "Hey wait, there are signifiers too!" :) Great read in this article and highly recommend The Design of Everyday Things, too.