affordance

The Psychology of Everyday Things, where he introduced the term "affordance" to describe physical features that "afford" a user control over a function - in this case, opening a door.

Across the Great Divide 2009

The concept of "affordance" has captured the imagination of designers.

JND.org 2008

(There are entries for the related concepts affordance and emergence, however).

E is for Ecology « An A-Z of ELT 2010

(There are entries for the related concepts affordance and emergence, however).

February « 2010 « An A-Z of ELT 2010

Conversely, URLs have the opposite default affordance — people can go look at them and see what you have said about yourself, and computers can go and visit them and discover other ways to interact with what you have published, or ask you permission for more.

It’s high time we moved to URL-based identifiers | FactoryCity 2008

Sort of echoing @Guillaume it does seem to me that from a branding perspective the name implies an affordance that is backwards.

OpenID usability is not an oxymoron | FactoryCity 2008

Of course this is a pain and close to impossible for anyone to find, but likely a better solution than adding a fourth UI affordance on the title bar.

Thursday, October 9, 2008 | Lifehacker Australia 2008

Of course this is a pain and close to impossible for anyone to find, but likely a better solution than adding a fourth UI affordance on the title bar.

How To Stop IE Messing Up Your Window Sizes | Lifehacker Australia 2008

A successful pretending object has to delicately balance pretending affordance with not making you look like an idiot.

Making Light: Making light under difficult conditions 2010

Thus, the Web is rolling back modernity's affordance of mass access to the best of culture -- and may, Keen fears, result in the restoration of a feudal class system when it comes to culture and knowledge.

David Weinberger: Andrew Keen's Best Case 2008