For affordance-based design, which is especially lacking in the architecture field, this study investigates the relationships between affordances and interior elements in the built environment by understanding intrinsic affordances by users. The ethnographic case study was conducted by unobtrusively observing participant behaviours during given tasks using video recordings, voice recordings and photographs. The 32 affordances were identified in a public space containing 22 observed affordances and 10 issue affordances. The paper defines the hierarchical nature of the interior elements, including area-level, set-level, object-level and detailed attribute-level elements. An awareness of human-based affordances, where humans can create specific affordances using their bodies and belongings, was significant in the current research. The affordance-interior design element map can be used to support the identification of interior elements that are relevant to certain affordances and to distinguish which affordances are demanded by occupants in the built environment. Overall, designers could embed the affordance concept in the early stages of the design process by choosing more critical affordances and interior elements. The affordance-interior design element matrix and the map may be developed as an initial data repository for affordance-based interior design.
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