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VI.3 May/June 1999
Page: 38
Digital Citation

Affordance, conventions, and design


Authors:
Donald Norman

Affordances, Constraints, and Conceptual Models The word affordance was coined by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson [1, 2] to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal). To Gibson, affordances are relationships. They exist naturally: they do not have to be visible, known, or desirable. I originally hated the idea: it didn't make sense. I cared about processing mechanisms, and Gibson waved them off as irrelevant. Then Gibson started spending considerable time in La Jolla, and so I was able to argue with him for long hours (both of us relished…




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