In psychology, affordance is what the environment offers the individual. In design, affordance has a narrower meaning; it refers to possible actions that an actor can readily perceive.
American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems,J. J. Gibson (1966). The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Allen and Unwin, London. and it occurs in many of his earlier essays.E.g., J. J. Gibson (1975). 'Affordances and behavior'. In E. S. Reed & R. Jones (eds.), Reasons for Realism: Selected Essays of James J. Gibson, pp. 410-411. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1 edn. His best-known definition is from his 1979 book, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception:
The word is used in a variety of fields: perceptual psychology; cognitive psychology; environmental psychology; evolutionary psychology; criminology; industrial design; human–computer interaction (HCI); interaction design; user-centered design; communication studies; instructional design; science, technology, and society (STS); sports science; and artificial intelligence.
Original development
The key to understanding affordance is that it is relational and characterizes the suitability of the environment to the observer, and so, depends on their current intentions and their capabilities. For instance, a set of steps which rises high does not afford climbing to the crawling infant, yet might provide rest to a tired adult or the opportunity to move to another floor for an adult who wished to reach an alternative destination. This notion of intention/needs is critical to an understanding of affordance, as it explains how the same aspect of the environment can provide different affordances to different people, and even to the same individual at another point in time. As Gibson puts it, “Needs control the perception of affordances (selective attention) and also initiate acts.”
Affordances were further studied by Eleanor J. Gibson, wife of James J. Gibson, who created her theory of perceptual learning around this concept. Her book, An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development, explores affordances further.
Gibson's is the prevalent definition in cognitive psychology. According to Gibson, humans tend to alter and modify their environment so as to change its affordances to better suit them. In his view, humans change the environment to make it easier to live in (even if making it harder for other animals to live in it): to keep warm, to see at night, to rear children, and to move around. This tendency to change the environment is natural to humans, and Gibson argues that it is a mistake to treat the social world apart from the material world or the tools apart from the natural environment. He points out that manufacturing was originally done by hand as a kind of manipulation. Gibson argues that learning to perceive an affordance is an essential part of socialization.
The theory of affordances introduces a "value-rich ecological object". Affordances cannot be described within the value-neutral language of physics, but rather introduces notions of benefits and injuries to someone. An affordance captures this beneficial/injurious aspect of objects and relates them to the animal for whom they are well/ill-suited. During childhood development, a child learns to perceive not only the affordances for the self, but also how those same objects furnish similar affordances to another. A child can be introduced to the conventional meaning of an object by manipulating which objects command attention and demonstrating how to use the object through performing its central function.Emma Williams and Alan Costall (2000), Taking Things More Seriously: Psychological Theories of Autism and the Material-Social Divide, . By learning how to use an artifact, a child “enters into the shared practices of society” as when they learn to use a toilet or brush their teeth. And so, by learning the affordances, or conventional meaning of an artifact, children learn the artifact's social world and further, become a member of that world.
Anderson, Yamagishi and Karavia (2002) found that merely looking at an object primes the human brain to perform the action the object affords.
As perceived action possibilities
Norman later explained that this restriction of the term's meaning had been unintended, and in his 2013 update of The Design of Everyday Things, he added the concept "signifiers". In the digital age, designers were learning how to indicate what actions were possible on a smartphone's touchscreen, which didn't have the physical properties that Norman intended to describe when he used the word "affordances".
However, the definition from his original book has been widely adopted in HCI and interaction design, and both meanings are now commonly used in these fields.
Following Norman's adaptation of the concept, affordance has seen a further shift in meaning where it is used as an uncountable noun, referring to the easy discoverability of an object or system's action possibilities, as in "this button has good affordance". This in turn has given rise to use of the verb afford – from which Gibson's original term was derived – that is not consistent with its dictionary definition (to provide or make available): designers and those in the field of HCI often use afford as meaning "to suggest" or "to invite".
The different interpretations of affordances, although closely related, can be a source of confusion in writing and conversation if the intended meaning is not made explicit and if the word is not used consistently. Even authoritative textbooks can be inconsistent in their use of the term. Human–Computer Interaction, Preece et al. (1994, p. 6): The authors explicitly define perceived affordances as being a subset of all affordances, but another meaning is used later in the same paragraph by talking about "good affordance." Universal Principles of Design, Lidwell, Holden & Butler (2003, p. 20): The authors first explain that round wheels are better suited for rolling than square ones and therefore better afford (i.e. allow) rolling, but later state that a door handle "affords" (i.e. suggests) pulling, but not pushing.
When affordances are used to describe information and communications technology (ICT) an analogy is created with everyday objects with their attendant features and functions.Faraj, S., & Azad, B. (2012). The Materiality of Technology: an Affordance Perspective. In Materiality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological World. . Yet, ICT's features and functions derive from the product classifications of its developers and designers. This approach emphasizes an artifact’s convention to be wholly located in how it was designed to be used. In contrast, affordance theory draws attention to the fit of the technology to the activity of the user and so lends itself to studying how ICTs may be appropriated by users or even misused. One meta-analysis reviewed the evidence from a number of surveys about the extent to which the Internet is transforming or enhancing community. The studies showed that the internet is used for connectivity locally as well as globally, although the nature of its use varies in different countries. It found that internet use is adding on to other forms of communication, rather than replacing them.
This framework adds specificity to affordances, focuses attention on relationality, and centralizes the role of values, politics, and power in affordance theory. The mechanisms and conditions framework is a tool of both socio-technical analysis and socially aware design.
This means that, when affordances are perceivable, they offer a direct link between perception and action, and, when affordances are hidden or false, they can lead to mistakes and misunderstandings.
However, in recent years the concept of affordance has been overly extended by many scholars beyond its ecological understanding. Norman’s (1988) introduction of affordance in the field of design contributed to the popularization of the concept, but at the same time it also led to a reductionist tendency and function creep, when affordance was often identified with the “availability features” of technology or software, as he later acknowledged and sought to correct with the concept of “signifiers” . Some educational researchers and philosophers criticize this tendency, arguing that it undermines the philosophical nature of affordance, turning the concept of human–environment relations into a technical label in education .
To overcome this collapse into triviality, some approaches have reaffirmed the relational and multidimensional nature of affordance. Van Lier (2004) develops the concept of “semiotic budget,” emphasizing that learners can only make use of affordances when they recognize and exploit signs in the learning environment . Davis (2016, 2020) proposes that affordances are never neutral but are always shaped by political, social, and cultural factors . In parallel, Rietveld and Kiverstein (2014) develop the concept of “landscapes of affordances,” describing networks of action opportunities that vary depending on embodied capacities and contexts. In this context .
Nguyen N. Quang (2025) proposes a five-dimensional framework of affordances including (1) perceptibility, (2) valence, (3) compositionality, (4) normativity, and (5) intentionality. According to this framework, an affordance becomes a learning opportunity only when it is simultaneously perceived by the learner, valued, combined with other affordances, situated in social norms, and actualized by an intention to act. These dimensions do not exist in isolation but operate as a dynamic relational structure: perception opens up potential, value guides participation, association connects opportunities, norms limit the scope of validity, and intention turns potential into practice. The five-dimensional framework is seen as an attempt to expand the concept of affordance in language education, against the tendency to reduce it to its instrumental function. It shows that language learning is not simply about exploiting the features of technology, but a process of negotiation, meaning assignment, and action in a complex socio-cultural space, where affordances are both open and limited (Nguyen, 2022; Van Lier, 2004; Davis, 2020). Nguyen’s contribution lies in its level of integration and its ability to overcome the reductionism that has dominated many understandings of affordance in language education . If Van Lier (2000, 2004) focuses on the semiotic budget as a form of semiotic resource, Norman (1988, 2013) narrows affordance to perceived action possibilities and then to signifiers that are more instrumental in design, Davis (2016, 2020) analyzes affordance through mechanisms–conditions with a socio-political focus, and Rietveld and Kiverstein (2014) emphasize the landscape of affordances as a relational field associated with embodied capacities, then Nguyen’s (2022) five-dimensional framework simultaneously integrates multiple dimensions. In this way, the ecological advocates of affordance theory both critique reductionism and the phenomenon of functional creep when affordances are reduced to merely “technological features,” and seek to restore affordances to their true socio–philosophical–relational nature .
Mechanisms and conditions framework of affordances
Three categories
Affordance in robotics
Fire safety
Affordances in language education
See also
Further reading
External links
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