Discoverability, in the context of product and interface design, is the degree of ease with which the user can find all the elements and features of a new system and whether it’s possible to figure out how to use it by interacting with it. Good discoverability makes it easy to determine what actions are possible to achieve with the object and where and how to perform them. Essentially, it refers to the human ability to discover what operations one can do. In other words, discoverability is the ability of the person using the product to determine what is possible to be done with the object and how to do it. Most failures of design stem from the inability of the object to convey its intended usage and operations. All operations should be discovered by systematic exploration.
Source: Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things; Bruce Tognazzini “First Principles of Interaction Design”
Example from original source:
Example from different source:
Source: Shazam
Real life example:
Great pick, Cindy! I believe affordance also plays a big part in the success of the ringing bell design.
I would add modern social network app in general also rely heavily on this design principle in helping the users discover grat content. e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube all have a feed that aims to help users discover content that they might like!
Thanks, Jeff! You’re right—modern social media networks do try to make it easy for users to “discover” new content; sometimes this is in a “discover” or “recommended” tab or feed, and other times, it’s interspersed with their main content.
Don Norman’s notion of discoverability focuses on whether it is possible to figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them, so in the case of social media, this could be how to post in your feed. There’s usually a large open text field at the top after logging in, as in the case of Facebook and Twitter, with a noticeable button to publish the content. By priming the user to update their status (“What’s on your mind?”) and emphasizing the button to post as a call-to-action, Facebook makes it easy for users to generate new content.