Affordances: Designing Intuitive User Interfaces
In This Course, You'll
Get excited when you use affordances to design intuitive user interfaces that help people achieve their goals effortlessly. Affordances are one of the key secrets behind products that are easy and intuitive to use. You'll empower people by making their lives easier, safer, and more enjoyable. If your designs frustrate people, you'll likely lose them. From websites to everyday objects, affordances instantly clarify how people should use products. In physical products, a handle says, "grab me." In tech, affordances guide interactions through recognizable elements like buttons that look clickable or a scissor icon that clearly means "cut" selected content. When people know what to do without thinking, they'll love your interface and keep coming back.
Make yourself invaluable with a deep understanding of how affordances make products feel effortless. An intuitive User Interface (UI) isn't just user-friendly; it's business-friendly. Studies show that when people feel confident using your product, they're more likely to choose it over competitors. People will make fewer mistakes when they naturally understand what to do. In industries like healthcare, transportation, or construction, good affordance design can even save lives.
Gain confidence and credibility as you use affordances to create products people love and recommend. You already understand affordances intuitively, like knowing that a door with a push plate opens inward. Your existing skills, combined with step-by-step guidance, make mastering affordances easy, regardless of your background. Clear affordances build trust in your design. You'll tap into familiar patterns and reduce cognitive load with proven frameworks that ethically influence behavior. You'll apply concepts such as visibility, findability, constraints, mapping, feedback, and conceptual models. Affordances are grounded in timeless human behaviors. AI can't replace these skills, so you'll stay in demand no matter how technology evolves.
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Why Learn Affordances?
Affordances fall under the umbrella term of User Experience (UX) design. UX design is your fast-track to a meaningful, secure, and rewarding career.
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UX design builds on your core human strengths, such as emotional intelligence, deep human understanding, critical thinking, intuition, and imagination.
AI can't replicate your uniquely human ability to design for real emotions and needs such as joy, comfort, curiosity, safety, and a sense of belonging. These deeply human insights are your superpowers. With UX design skills, you'll turn them into products and experiences people truly love. You become irreplaceable, confident and in demand.
And yes, we'll also show you how to use AI to accelerate your results.
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Salaries for people with design skills are soaring, often surpassing $200K in cities like San Francisco, and job growth is strong (13% globally). Why? Because companies thrive when their users are happy. Companies that invest in great design outperform the S&P 500 Index by a whopping 228%.
Design a Life You Love
Great design is all about helping people meet their needs and achieve their goals through intuitive, meaningful, and delightful experiences. Skills in design will empower you to create experiences and products that make people's lives easier and more fulfilling. And when people love what you create, your business thrives, and your salary potential grows. You get the ultimate double win:
You'll feel deeply fulfilled by designing experiences and products people love.
You'll be financially rewarded for your real-world impact.
Course Overview: What You'll Master
- Each week, one lesson becomes available.
- There's no time limit to finish a course. Lessons have no deadlines.
- Estimated learning time: 15 hours 59 mins spread over 5 weeks.
Lesson 0: Welcome and Introduction
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0.1: An Introduction to Courses from IxDF (37 mins)
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0.2: Get Help, Career Advice, and Job Opportunities (2 mins)
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0.3: How to Get Your Course Certificate (16 mins)
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0.4: Grow Your Global Network and Build Your Brand (12 mins)
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0.5: Global Skills, Local Jobs: Build Your Network in Your Area (2 mins)
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0.6: Gain Timeless Skills Through Courses from IxDF (21 mins)
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0.7: Mandatory vs Optional Lesson Items (7 mins)
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0.8: Learn Smarter: The Perfect Mix of Video and Text (6 mins)
Lesson 1: An Introduction to Affordances
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1.1: Welcome to Gamification - How to Create Engaging User Experiences (37 mins)
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1.2: Affordances and Human-Computer Interaction (25 mins)
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1.3: James J. Gibson's Concept of Affordances (15 mins)
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1.4: Norman's Concept of Affordances (48 mins)
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1.5: Conversations: Affordances and Human-Computer Interaction (6 mins)
Lesson 2: Types of Affordance
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2.1: Types of Affordances (43 mins)
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2.2: Examples of Real Affordances (11 mins)
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2.3: Examples of Perceived Affordances (12 mins)
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2.4: Conversations: Perceived and Real Affordances (6 mins)
Lesson 3: Bill Gaver's Concept of Affordances
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3.1: Affordances and HCI (20 mins)
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3.2: Bill Gaver's Concept of Affordances (13 mins)
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3.3: Hidden Affordances: Types of Affordance (47 mins)
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3.4: False Affordances: Types of Affordance (18 mins)
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3.5: Conversations: Affordances and Associations (6 mins)
Lesson 4: Rex Hartson's Concept of Affordances
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4.1: Affordances in Interaction Design (22 mins)
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4.2: Types of Affordances (49 mins)
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4.3: Physical Affordances: Hartson's Distinctions (14 mins)
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4.4: Sensory Affordances: Hartson's Distinctions (15 mins)
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4.5: Functional Affordances (16 mins)
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4.6: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (6 mins)
Lesson 5: Affordances and Usability Principles
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5.1: Affordances and Usability Principles (19 mins)
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5.2: Findability: Affordances and Usability Principles (51 mins)
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5.3: Constraints: Affordances and Usability Principles (18 mins)
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5.4: Mapping: Affordances and Usability Principles (25 mins)
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5.5: Feedback: Affordances and Usability Principles (21 mins)
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5.6: The Psychology of Interaction Design (19 mins)
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5.7: Conversations: Identify Affordances (6 mins)
Lesson 6: A Summary of Affordances and Related Concepts
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6.1: Affordances (12 mins)
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6.2: Factors Affecting Affordances (43 mins)
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6.3: Affordances in Human-Computer Interaction (10 mins)
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6.4: Affordances, technology, and safety - PJ Treffner (3 hours 34 mins)
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6.5: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (6 mins)
Lesson 7: Course Certificate, Final Networking, and Course Wrap-up
How Others Have Benefited
Jeppe N. Saxtorph, Denmark
“I found this course very neatly executed in terms of the course material, questions at the learning flow. Thank you IDF!”
Wilma Miranda, Portugal
“This has been my favorite course so far! It can be a bit challenging, but I appreciate the constant reinforcement of terms and concepts. It's really gotten me to think of my environment from a different perspective.”
Sudarshan Shettigar, India
“It's great to learn the term "Affordance" and the science behind it. It always existed in my actions but after learning it, now whatever actions I do I emphasize the affordance the object had offered me in real and virtual space.”
How It Works
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