Definition

After completion traversal identifies the next-active transition, affordance matching is the offering's surfacing of affordances that contribute to route efficacy for it.

Three fit-altitudes

Affordances at any transition come in different fit-altitudes — different scopes of the user's pursuit they fit:

• Direct fit — serves the next critical-route step itself.
• Tailored fit — serves an unrequired-but-common Expected or Related tier preference within the transition.
• Parent-context fit — anticipates a higher-level intent in the nesting that this transition sits inside.

All three are route-efficacious for something; what differs is which scope of the user's pursuit they fit. The user's hopscotch selects among the surfaced affordances at runtime.

Cardinality stays variable

A single surfaced affordance forces the user down one route; affordance matching holds the cardinality open so that several can be surfaced when several fit. Construction-time work that tries to pre-determine which affordance the user should integrate substitutes provider judgment for runtime user activity. The user is the only party with full access to their now-state, energy, and pursuit; whichever affordance they select is the one that fits their actual transition. Affordance matching keeps that selection at runtime.

Distinct from reachability

Reachability and affordance matching are sometimes conflated because both bear on whether the next step is engageable. Reachability is about the user's capacity to initiate — energy, attention, decisiveness, skills, motivation. Affordance matching is about whether route-efficacious affordances are surfaced at all. A user can be fully reachable and stuck because nothing matches; a fully matched affordance can fail to engage because reachability isn't there.

Mismatched affordances

The failure mode is mismatched affordances: the next-active transition is correctly identified, but what gets surfaced doesn't fit it. A user who just created their first project sees an upgrade-to-Pro prompt rather than an invite-team affordance; a user mid-workflow gets a feature-tour overlay rather than a next-step prompt. Something is surfaced, but it's not what would advance the user's actual transition. Distinct from a completion-then-dead-end failure, where nothing is surfaced at all.

Example

A user completes signup for a project-management tool. Completion traversal identifies the next-active transition as "create the first project." Affordance matching surfaces three affordances at different fit-altitudes: a template gallery (direct fit — produces the project), an import-from-Trello option (tailored fit — common among users migrating from a competitor), and a guided tour of a pre-built demo project (parent-context fit — anticipates the higher-level intent of "evaluate whether this tool works for me before committing to it"). The user picks whichever one their actual pursuit fits; the team didn't have to guess in advance which one it would be.

See also

• Encounter-moment adequacy
• Affordance design
• Reachable affordances
• Felt agency