Hopscotch
Hopscotch is the pattern by which users move from one resource to another: at each point, they pick whichever option they notice, can reach, and find useful for what they're doing right now. They use it, land somewhere new, and pick again. The picking happens in the moment rather than from a plan, and the options aren't limited to what the provider built: third-party tools and makeshift substitutes count too.
Definition
The user's pattern of traversing the affordance landscape by selecting one available affordance at each step of their route, engaging it, then re-selecting at the next step from what's reachable in the new now-state.
Selection then jump, repeated
At each step, the user evaluates the affordances within reach and picks the one that best fits the step they're at — most relevant, most recognizable, most reachable from their current state. They engage that affordance, land in a new now-state, and evaluate the affordances now within reach. Then they pick again.
Selection is local and just-in-time. The user picks based on what they can see and reach in the moment, not from a pre-planned sequence. Across a full route, this produces a trajectory that jumps between affordances — provider-built, third-party, user-external, or improvised substitute — wherever fit is best at each step.
Step is the broader primitive
Step is the user's just-in-time advance from now-state. Hopscotch is the specific case where the step's means is moving from one external affordance to another. Not every step is a hopscotch — sometimes the user advances by running a mental procedure or applying body skill alone, with no external affordance engaged. Hopscotch is the right concept for affordance-engagement; step covers the broader scope of all user advancement, including steps that use only internal capacity.
Providers shape paths; users select affordances
The user selects from the broader affordance landscape, not just the provider's offering. The provider shapes a path — the route-efficacious slice of the landscape they've built — and the user constructs a route by hopscotching across the whole landscape, including third-party tools, the user's existing tools, and improvised substitutes when nothing the provider supplies fits. An affordance the user can't recognize, can't reach when needed, or can't initiate from their current state gets hopscotched past.
Example
A user sending their first invoice in billing software. They sign in (provider affordance), click "new invoice" (provider), jump to their email to find the client's address (user-external affordance), come back and paste it in, jump to a search engine to confirm a tax ID format they don't remember (substitute affordance), come back to fill in the remaining fields, send the invoice (provider), and jump back to their email to confirm receipt.
The actualized route crosses into and out of the offering several times. At each step the user picked from what was reachable; the provider's offering is one source of affordances among several.