Affordance is a term borrowed from English that comes from psychology. It defines the characteristic of an object to suggest to its user its mode of use.
The importance of affordance in our everyday objects is very easy to perceive.
The notion of affordance in design was introduced by Donald Norman, American cognitive psychologist and professor emeritus of cognitive sciences at the University of California, San Diego in his work “The Design of Everyday Thing” in 1988.
“Affordance is a key to enabling the user to find what they are looking for, understand how it works and use it.”
Donald Norman, 1988, “The Design of Everyday Thing”
Since then, this term has been commonly used in interface ergonomics and therefore in UX design to define the ability of an element to suggest to the user the actions to be carried out in order to save them cognitive efforts. We can summarize this notion as “the call of a thing to use it”. We can guess the interest in paying particular attention to the design of CTAs (Call TO Action), i.e. buttons and links on a digital interface. These elements must “speak for themselves” and guide users without further explanation.
Some examples of application in UX design
CTAs should be very clear
For clarity, it is not always necessary to use a button for secondary actions.
Do not confuse the use of radio buttons and check boxes
Adapt the tone to your target
Prefer using drop-down lists
Capital letters are often difficult to read in CTAs.
