affordance

[uh-fawr-duhns]

noun

1. a feature of an object or environment that prompts or promotes a specific use or interaction, especially one easily perceivable to the user, as a doorknob.

   The indentations on a bar of chocolate are an affordance that makes use of our common knowledge that the thinnest parts of something are the most breakable.

Word History and Origins

Origin of affordance¹

First recorded in 1875–80 in the sense “amount one can afford to pay”; current sense dates from 1965–70; afford ( def. ) + -ance ( def. )

Example Sentences

If one believed that the star-spangled banner flapped “o’er the land of the free,” then protest during its veneration – not against it, as was deliberately misconstrued – is precisely the affordance that the ritual symbolizes.

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This is what scholars term an “affordance” of the medium.

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“More technology leads to more user affordance, leads to better expressivity for the user, and will demand more of us, technically.”

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But there’s a clever little affordance built into that strange bar.

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“We don’t want you to have to learn a new affordance,” says Erika Trautman, director, Google Workspace.

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