What are signifiers and affordances?
The frame around a door and the presence of a door handle communicates that you are indeed looking at a door. The frame and handle are signifiers.
The curve of a handle, its joint and the way it extends collectively affords gripping and turning, which suggest its use. These are affordances.
Signifiers communicate what it is that you are looking at, affordances communicate how you interact with it.
Or, as Don Norman puts it, “Affordances define what actions are possible. Signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptible signals of what can be done. Signifiers are of far more importance to designers than are affordances.”
Understanding the interplay of affordances and signifiers is a core component to designing products that become "invisible."
