Scientific Definition
What an environment offers an actor for action — handles to grip, surfaces to sit on, paths to follow.
Plain-English Definition
What an environment offers an actor for action — handles to grip, surfaces to sit on, paths to follow.
Feynman Explanation
Design isn't what something is. It's what it lets you do without thinking.
Core Principle
What an environment offers an actor for action — handles to grip, surfaces to sit on, paths to follow.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
What an environment offers an actor for action — handles to grip, surfaces to sit on, paths to follow.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Why most 'user education' is wasted effort fighting the affordances the product actually offers.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Design isn't what something is. It's what it lets you do without thinking.
Examples
- J.J. Gibson's ecological psychology; later popularized by Don Norman in design.
- Why most 'user education' is wasted effort fighting the affordances the product actually offers.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Audit the affordances. The behavior you want should be the obvious one.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Audit the affordances. The behavior you want should be the obvious one.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Environmental factors influence perception and judgment.
Preference between two options depends on what other options sit beside them — attraction, compromise, similarity effects.
The same message in a different setting produces a different result.
Removing a quote from its context to distort its meaning.
A change to the choice architecture that predictably shifts behavior — without removing options.
Teaching the same concept to different audiences over time is naturally spaced repetition with feedback baked in.
A visual map of where in your day, mind, and environment your best thinking actually happens.
Reading micro-shifts in another person's state — breath, color, micro-expression — in real time.
What we wear influences how we think and perform.
Tools, notebooks, and trusted others are literally part of your cognitive system — not just aids to it.
Eye movements that loosely correlate with which representational system is active — visual, auditory, kinesthetic.
The brain's overnight cleaning system; clears metabolic waste during sleep.