When we want to answer what is a affordances, we might as well imagine some scenarios. When you open the door, you turn the handle and the door is pushed open. When we drive, we use our hands to adjust the gears to get different car speeds, and the object will give us feedback. Generally speaking, it is the process of the environment and the object being returned to the person is the affordances.
The concept of affordance was proposed by James Gibson (1977, 1979) as part of his ecological approach to visual perception. The Affordance of the environment is the function of the environment to provide animals or humans, good or bad, with pre-existing properties. We should look at the affordances from multiple perspectives, which is not only physical, but also psychological factors. It also depends on different media, different surfaces, different objects and so on.
So, we can look at what affordances is in the field of human-computer interaction. In the process of human-computer interaction, the most important thing is logic and usability. One example of this is the butterfly vote. The Democratic Party is second in the left column, but to vote for it, you should press the third button. Pressing the second button will vote for the Reform Party. This is a classic violation of logic in the interaction process, which can lead to confusion and disastrous results. Therefore, the positive affordances is what people want, and the wrong burden will affect people’s judgment. So it’s important to pay attention to the affordances of logic.
