Affordances
The properties of an object or environment that indicate to a user what actions are possible — a button that looks pushable, a handle that looks pullable. Well-designed affordances make the correct interaction intuitive without labels or instructions.
Origin
American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems and refined it in The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979). Donald Norman later popularized the concept in design through his 1988 book The Design of Everyday Things.
Everyday Use
It's easiest to _affordances _in design and computers, but it's really all around us — how we navigate through our daily habits, how we start or break habits, and how we interact with everyone and everything. I like to use an affordance lens to help guide my daily life in the direction that syncs with my goals — running shoes unlaced and ready to slip into, or a phone charging overnight across the room to decrease distraction, for example.