Missing Features

The concept of affordance is critical to usability. Affordance describes how the very design of an object describes to the user intuitively how that object should be operated and controlled.

When affordance is used correctly, you don’t notice it. For example, most door handles are designed so that a person just knows how to operate the door handle, without thinking. When affordance is used badly (say when a door handle fails to indicate whether you PUSH or PULL), you notice it every day.

Take a look at the door of this refrigerator:

The square spot that is a different texture near the door opening (where the arrow points) is an example of badly designed affordance. The rough spot gives the area a “press me” sense (as if the roughness of the button wants you to press it). But you don’t press this control, you actually need to pull it.

So everyone new to the fridge does exactly what your correspondent did: press against it several times, wondering why the latch wasn’t released. I’m not pressing hard enough, your correspondent thought. Press harder.

Finally, after closer inspection of the control, the aha moment occurred: pull it.

If the goal of the design was to make the user feel like an idiot then this control was masterfully designed.

The lesson here is important: usability is everywhere.

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