Affordances and signifiers

Their wordsAffordances determine what actions are possible. Signifiers communicate where the action should take place. We need both.

Their wordsAffordances control what actions are possible. For designers, signifiers are far more important. Signifiers are how communication takes place, how one signals the appropriate controls and operations.

Their wordsTwo of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.

Their wordsThe most important principle for taming complexity is to provide a good conceptual model, which has already been well covered in this book.

Their wordsGUIs have superior usability because they show people what can be done rather than requiring them to articulate what they want.

Their wordsHopefully I've convinced you that chatbots are a terrible interface for LLMs. Or, at the very least, that we can add controls, information, and affordances to our chatbot interfaces to make them more usable.

Their wordsBig flat toggle buttons under satisfying tension. Clear affordances. You push them down, not in. One click catches, one doesn't. You can use them with bare hands, oven mitts, fingers coated in slippery whatever. Doesn't matter. Plenty of surface area. Outstanding design. It's all been downhill from there.

Their wordsWe consider interface copy to be an affordance, too. Reading it is an act that gives the user information for subsequent actions.

Their wordsWhere UX tries to provide a likely false but useful mental model of the interior workings to the user, game design tries to guide the player towards a fairly accurate mental model.

Their wordsthe invisible thinking that goes behind building a product. That's one that I think I expect and hire for at Anthropic and I think has been the long unsung hero of product designers everywhere is like the mental model, the interaction model, like the base primitives that compose how you think about what you're interacting with.