COGNITIVE AFFORDANCES

• Affordances are features (clues or cues) that help users
• Cognitive affordances – help user in knowing
• Physical affordances – help user in doing
• Mapping part of Interaction Cycle is only cognitive, not physical
• Cognitive affordance is quite possible most important usability concept/guideline
• Perhaps highest percentage of usability problems are cognitive affordance problems
• Good cognitive affordance reduces need for training, user manuals, help, support
• Cognitive affordances help users:
• know what to do next
• know how to do it
• steer away from doing wrong things (errors)
• be aware of alternatives, short cuts
• be aware of modes
• Use effective visual cues to show what's available
• Consistency supports guessing, learning
• Layout screen with white space between functional groups
• Label groups with common term
• Use precise word choices for labels, menu choices, and other wording
• Menus, buttons, icons, and Tool Tips are where users will look for affordances to commands
• Give special attention to first intention for each task, the "getting started" intention, possibly biggest need for cognitive affordances, feed-forward, visual cues
• Visual cues, Tool tips, pop-ups, "click here to . . ." are good affordances for getting started
• Employ usage hints to steer user into correct action (feed-forward, visual cues, consistency, grouping, labeling)
• Use mouse cursor as visual cue to distinguish modes (guaranteed to be in user focus)
• Good for fly-over affordance (e.g., the "finger" as a link, the "hand" as something to grab and move things)
• Group objects related by task (not necessarily by functionality) to offer cognitive affordance in screen layout design
• Example: compound dialogue box, menu choices, tool pallets
• Use cognitive affordance in graphical object design (e.g., application objects)
• Visual cue to help user know what is active (clickable)
  -- Example: Column headings in Explorer. Click to use as sort criterion. Few people know about it, and it is hard to discover. If they looked more like buttons, would help discovery. Could also easily add Tool Tip.
• Show clear boundaries of clickable objects
• Adding text labels helps (users tend to click on these)
• Provide affordance for navigation
• Make explicit where an action will take a user
• When returning from dialogue box or another screen
• "Return" or "Return to ... " is often better than OK, Cancel, Quit, Exit