| > A door handle affords opening. It's a bit more subtle than that. From my copy of the 2002 edition (p.9): > Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. Plates are for pushing. Knobs are for turning. Slots are for inserting things into. Balls are for throwing or bouncing. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction is required. Then on p.88 > Consider the hardware for an unlocked door. It need not have any moving parts: it can be a fixed knob, plate, handle, or groove. Not only will the proper hardware operate the door smoothly, but it will also indicate just how the door is to be operated: it will exhibit the proper affordances. Suppose the door opens by being pushed. The easiest way to indicate this is to have a plate at the spot where the pushing should be done. A plate, if large enough for the hand, clearly and unambiguously marks the proper action. It's not just that handles afford opening, it's that they afford pulling. I've had a quick flick through the pages on affordances, and can't see anything that stands out about the drift of the word "affordance", so that might be in a later edition than the 2002 one. (The original edition is from 1998). |
It's also worth pointing about that the original definition of affordances, by Gibson, is about animals and their relationship to their environment, which can be quite broad in its totality.