Looking at the UX principles that mozilla use as keywords to tag bugs in bugzilla it looks like ux-affordance and ux-discovery are very similar:
ux-affordance — controls should visually express how the user should interact with them. [Source: Norman]
ux-discovery — users should be able to discover functionality and information by visually exploring the interface, they should not be forced to recall information from memory. (This is often the nemesis of ux-minimalism since additional visible items diminish the relative visibility of other items being displayed). [Source: Nielsen]
Are these just two ways of looking at the same problem, or are there UX issues that would fall under one principle but not the other?
Update:
Perhaps the tag-wiki definitions on this site could be updated based on the responses to this question. They are currently:
Affordance is a property of an object that naturally indicates how the object can be used.
And for discovery:
the process by which a user learns what a program can do through affordances in the UX.
Answer
According to CodeAcademy, potentials for interaction are collectively called the affordances of an object. The visual cues or other aspects of an object that a designer uses to indicate potential and intended affordances of the object are called signifiers.
"The concept of 'affordance' has captured the imagination of designers. The term was originally invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson to refer to a relationship: the actions possible by a specific agent on a specific environment. To Gibson, affordances did not have to be perceivable or even knowable -- they simply existed. When I introduced the term into design in 1988 I was referring to perceivable affordances. Since then, the term has been widely used and misused. The result has been confusions and a goldmine for academic scholars who get to write learned articles about the true meaning of the term."
No comments:
Post a Comment