Why It Feels Right: Affordance and the Mind’s Hidden Expectations

Why do some products feel natural the moment you touch them—while others are baffling from the start? 

In this episode, we explore the psychology of affordances—those subtle cues that tell us what to do next, without saying a word. From door handles to digital apps, we break down how great design speaks directly to human intuition.

You’ll learn:

• The psychological principles that make interfaces feel “just right”
  
  
  
• What Don Norman meant by affordances, signifiers, and anti-affordances
  
  
  
• How to avoid common design traps that confuse users
  
  
  
• Real-world examples that reveal the power of creating an intuitive user experience
  
  

By the end of this episode, you’ll start seeing design in a whole new way—and be ready to create products that people instantly understand.

Transcript

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Have you ever wondered why some products are so intuitive to use while others are just confusing?

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Imagine you're at a friend's house trying to turn off their TV and you reach

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for the remote and you're looking for the on-off button and you're confused

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until your friend says, oh, you're actually supposed to hold down the center

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button and hold it for a few seconds.

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Now compare that experience to using a remote where the on-off button is right

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where you expected it to be.

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For a classic example, have you ever pulled on a door handle only to realize

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that you're actually supposed to push it instead?

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These everyday experiences perfectly illustrate how mere objects can invite

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certain actions from us.

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In this episode, we'll talk all about affordance, the natural cues that invite us to interact.

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By understanding affordance, you'll learn how to create designs that just feel intuitive to use.

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It gets right to the question of why do some products, services,

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even apps on your phone, just feel right the first time you use them?

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And what's happening psychologically when a space or an object just feels instantly

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familiar and comfortable?

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Join us today as we uncover the answers to these questions, exploring real-world

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examples from remote controls to digital apps and Norman doors,

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and even that comfortable layout of your favorite cafe.

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By the end of this episode, you'll see the world around you with fresh eyes,

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empowered to design experiences that humans can effortlessly navigate.

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Affordance happens when objects in the world around us lend themselves to certain actions.

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The idea of affordance has its root in an area called ecological psychology.

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This area frames psychological and design concepts in terms of organisms and

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their relationship to environments.

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The idea of affordance was coined by ecological psychologist John J.

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Gibson. The concept was developed further and brought into the HCI world by

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Donald Norman, who again was one of the founding fathers of UX.

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In a natural environment that's not built by human beings, we sometimes come

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across elements of the environment that have affordances, that happen to be fit for humans.

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Think about a tree with a low-hanging, strong branch that you can climb on,

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or a body of water that is transparent and easy to walk into,

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and it's shallow enough to stand in, and since it's transparent,

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you can see whether or not there's danger or anything you should watch out for in the water.

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Or think about you're going for a hike and you see a rock or a tree stump that's

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flat enough to be comfortable to sit on.

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This all deals with affordance. So there's two levels of affordance,

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functional affordance and perceptual affordance.

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That means what it sounds like. The functional affordance means that you're

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able to do something with it and perceptual affordance means it looks like or

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seems like you're able to do something with it.

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So to give you an example in digital design where you can have one without the other.

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Imagine a decorative visual element on a screen that looks clickable but isn't.

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That would be an example of perceptual without functional affordance.

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Or imagine an app that has gestures that you can do, such as swiping or pinching,

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but there's nothing to tell you that you can do that.

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That would be functional affordance but without the perceptual affordance.

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Let's take a few minutes to consider an idea called prospect refuge theory,

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which arguably relates to affordance.

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And this describes a type of environment that affords itself to people feeling safe and comfortable.

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This was a theory that came from geographer Jay Appleton in a 1975 book,

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The Experience of Landscape.

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Okay, so in this concept of prospect refuge theory, prospect is the ability

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to see and survey a wide open space.

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Refuge is a sheltered place where you're shielded from danger.

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The idea is that elements in the environment can afford this feeling for us.

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Imagine standing at the edge of a quiet forest with a dense thicket of trees behind you.

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In front of you, a broad grassy area stretches out, gently sloping downward into a valley.

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Beside you is a large sturdy oak tree with wide branches creating a natural canopy of shade.

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You feel the ability to prospect or see and survey everything that's clearly in front of you.

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At the same time, you feel a sense of refuge and the ability to have shelter from the trees nearby.

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Now, that was an example from a nice, peaceful nature scene,

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but you can see people take advantage of prospect refuge all the time in real life.

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When a person enters a cafe and they sit in a corner with their back to the

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wall so that they can see the whole room and have a sense of control and they

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know that nobody can come up behind them,

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this might give them a sense of security.

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Not everybody feels the need to do this, but it could give somebody an extra sense of security.

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Or someone has a house on the hill where they can look out of their window and

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they can see the whole neighborhood while feeling secure.

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So this is one type of example of affordance where environmental features can

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afford something like prospect refuge.

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But in general, features of the environment can afford all types of things.

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So again tree stumps can afford sitting

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and snow and ice might afford sledding

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or sliding and of course since

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the world around us is not just created by nature it's

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created by humans too that means that humans can

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and do create a world around us that affords all kinds of things that make it

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easier for humans to do things in the field of human factors and design psychology

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seek to use our understanding of humans and provide affordance intentionally.

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So for some quick examples, chairs afford sitting, buttons afford pushing,

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handles afford grabbing, stairs afford climbing.

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Anything that lends itself to an action invites us to do that action more easily.

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So relating this to the digital realm where many of us work,

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A slider control, for example,

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affords our ability to set a value by sliding a piece of the widget from left to right along an axis.

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Hyperlinks, since we've learned them and gotten used to them, afford clicking.

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Drag and drop interfaces afford moving objects from one place to another.

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Switches afford our ability to toggle things on and off. And that's what they look like they do.

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They look like they switch on and off and they remind us of physical switches.

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And prospect and refuge elements arguably exist in the digital realm, too.

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Think about elements that give full visibility of a system, like a dashboard

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or a situation awareness display.

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Those would be examples of prospects that allow you to see things.

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And refuges can exist in user interfaces as well, in the form of privacy settings

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or protected user profiles, anything that gives us the ability to act and feel safe at the same time.

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Or going back to our more general idea of affordances, think about the products

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that have become big hits, partly because of their ability to afford some easy action.

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So for example, smartphone touchscreens afford our ability to do gestures that

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make it very easy to directly execute functionalities.

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With our gestures. The Nintendo Wii motion-sensitive controller affords our

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ability to do intuitive gameplay actions.

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Even ChatGPT is great partly because of an affordance.

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It gives us the easiest way that we know about to query for data,

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which is two-way natural conversation.

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In collaborative spaces, sticky notes afford our inclination to capture ideas

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one by one and to move them around and reorganize them.

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When desks in a classroom are grouped together, this affords collaborative activities

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rather than facing the front of the classroom that affords attending to a lecture.

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In learning environments, flashcards afford cycling through many different small examples of things.

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Scissors, glue, and scrap paper afford generative, creative activities.

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So when we think about it, there are countless ways we can use affordances to

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create experiences that feel natural and satisfying.

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Now, the concept of affordances is a bit richer than what we covered here today,

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and ideas have been added to it over time.

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For example, Don Norman in 2008 made some distinctions between what he called

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signifiers and affordances and even anti-affordances.

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But for today's discussion, we wanted to introduce the basics.

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So when we look at examples like filling out a form or furniture to be used

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or a cafe or an app, some things just feel right because they're aligned with

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our psychological expectations.

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The designs of these things leverage affordances that match both what we can

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do and what we expect to do.

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When things just feel instantly familiar, what's happening psychologically is

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that our unconscious sees and recognizes the affordances embedded in our designs.

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They signal to us that this environment naturally fits our needs and expectations.

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So as a design psychologist, you want to design your product or service such

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that people's tasks and goals fit right into them.

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And with just a few thoughtful design tweaks, we can create experiences that

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naturally lend themselves to what people need.