Design of Every day things.
Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.
Discoverability: Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them?
Understanding: What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?
Discoverability results from appropriate application of five fundamental psychological concepts covered in the next few chapters: affordances, signifiers, constraints, mappings, and feedback. But there is a sixth principle, perhaps most important of all: the conceptual model of the system. It is the conceptual model that provides true understanding. - Don-Norman/Design of Every day things.
Affordance: Relationship of object and user, that enables some usage.
Don-Norman makes it very clear in his book that Affordance is NOT a property of an object. It is a relationship between the object and user.
His example is that chair affords sitting for an average adult, but does not afford sitting for ants.
Moreover there is a destinction between affordances that an object has an perceived affordances, what the target customer can perceive (see, feel, hear) that the product can do.
Perceived affordance
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Don-Norman's definition:
For me, the term signifier refers to any mark or sound, any perceivable indicator that communicates appropriate behavior to a person. - Don-Norman
My definition:
I think we need adjust the definition of signifier to highlight that whether signifier will successfully communicate the appropriate behavior is very much dependent on the agent/user of the product. Hence, we need to add additional AIMS-TO clarification into the definition of signifier:
Signifier: Any mark or sound, any perceivable indicator that AIMS-TO communicate appropriate behavior to a person.
And add on additional term Signification:
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References
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