We have moved on from affordances to participation, but I have been tossing around some ideas about the language of affordance. It began with a tweet and a reply:
@giustini "affordances" affords (hah) a flexibility that the dichotomy of pros/cons doesn't #libr559m
— Alyssa (@alyssafeir) January 16, 2013
Now, since blogger affords me a greater space for reflection as well as the opportunity to discuss with you, my dear reader, I decided to expand on my thoughts here rather than Twitter. The term affordance was first coined by James J. Gibson, an perceptual psychologist, as “an action possibility available in the environment to an individual, independent of the individual’s ability to perceive this possibility” (McGrenere, 2000, p. 1). The term was later used by Donald Norman in The Psychology of Everyday Things (now published as The Design of Everyday Things):
…the term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. A chair affords (‘is for’) support and, therefore, affords sitting. A chair can also be carried. (Norman in McGrenere, 2000, p. 2).
If we apply to this to a social networking site, such as Google+, we can say that it affords: connecting with people, sharing interesting links, images, thoughts with your ‘circles, and getting into arguments with other users via commenting. There are many affordances—some of them are positive (connecting with people) and some of them are negative (getting into arguments with strangers). Of course, some affordances can have both positive and negative impacts on your experience with the tool.
In my initial response on Twitter, I preferred the use of ‘affordances’ over ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ because of the flexibility of the former and the dichotomy of the latter. While I still think this is true, I don’t think the language of ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ is talking about the possible uses of tool in the same way as ‘affordances’. In my mind, we can assign pros and cons to the affordances. For example, in Twitter I can immediately share a picture of my new haircut with the my friends, family, and the world (pro), but I may also be ridiculed for how bad it is (con). Another example, I can post a comment on a friend’s wall (pro), but they don’t get my joke because it can be hard to read sarcasm and as a result are offended (con). A pro is an advantage of something and a con a disadvantage, and I see these terms applying to the affordances.
