Shannan Harrington

Dr. Gu

ENGL 8123

8 October 2024

Affordance White Paper

Definition:

The term affordance is defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary as “the quality or property of an object that defines its possible uses or makes clear how it can or should be used.” The article “UX Design Glossary” provides additional clarification for the term in claiming that affordance is a property that provides a clue as to how a user can interact with an object, no matter if that object is digital or physical (“What is Affordance?”). The article follows its definition with examples of affordance, including a door handle—although, I’m sure we’ve all pulled when we were meant to push—and a receiver icon to answer or make a phone call.

As Dr. Gu said in class, affordance combines both intuition, “quick and ready insight” (Merriam Webster Dictionary), and common sense, “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts” (Merriam Webster Dictionary). Considering these definitions, affordance can be understood as the traits of an object that suggests its possible use. These traits should be able to be perceived quickly and instinctively by users. No explanations or instructions should be needed.

History & Background:

Affordance first appeared used as a noun in James J. Gibson’s work The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, published in 1966. Amid a discussion on kinds of perceptual development that occur during human growth, Gibson writes:

When the constant properties of constant objects are perceived (the shape, size, color, texture, composition, motion, animation, and position relative to other objects), the observer can go on to detect their affordances. I have coined this word as a substitute for values, a term which carries an old burden of philosophical meaning. I mean simply what things furnish, for good or ill. What they afford the observer, after all, depends on their properties. (285)

In this definition, Gibson mentions both physical traits and values, which can be understood as worth or uses. These terms contribute to his explanation that affordance is a trait that an object possesses that contributes to it possible uses, though he does seem to imply that these traits might not always be beneficial.

Gibson continues on to explain that in detecting affordances, children learn “what things are manipulable and how they can be manipulated” (285), implying that affordances influence the development of perception, meaning children will assume that objects with the same affordances will function in the same ways.

In 1979, Gibson offered additional clarification for his definition of affordance in his book The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception. He claims, “The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment” (qtd. in “UX Design Glossary”).

“UX Design Glossary” summarizes the discussion that follows this quote as Gibson explaining how people tend to change their environment to address their needs or wants better (UX Design Glossary). This idea is touched on in The Senses when Gibson implies that detecting affordances is what allows for children to learn how objects can be used to create items, achieve goals, and even manipulate people (285). This idea of affordances leading to possible manipulations and creations is akin to the idea that “laziness is the mother of invention.” In humanity’s search for efficiency, people find innovative ways to use tools, but to do that people must detect all the possible affordances of an object.

In 1988, Donald Norman expanded the definition of affordance in his book The Design of Everyday Things. He claims, “Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things…When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction needed” (qtd. in “UX Design Glossary”). This definition offers a unique perspective because it implies that affordances themselves can be manipulated instead of a user manipulating an object based on the detected affordances. This idea of manipulating affordances is particularly relevant when it comes to the term’s application to technology innovations in online environments.

In 2011, Samer Faraj, Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa, and Ann Majchrzak conducted a study where they examined how fluctuating tensions were addressed in online communities. In their article “Knowledge Collaboration in Online Communities,” they argue that these tensions provided opportunities for knowledge collaboration when the communities responded in a way that was generative and encouraged others to engage with the idea. In their discussion, they defined affordance through the lens of technology: “We suggest technology affordance as a generative response, one that views technology, action, and roles as emergent, inseparable, and coevolving” (1233). This take implies a codependent relationship between technology affordance and user engagement, so as the user interacts with technology, the need for more affordances arises.

Faraj et. al. continue their discussion by highlighting three potential affordances that platforms for online communities can provide. The first is reviewability, which allows for users to collaboratively review ideas. The second is re-combinability, which allows for individual users to build on each other’s contributions. The third affordance, experimentation, allows for users to try out new ideas in a safe space, like a virtual sandbox (1234).

In the decade that has passed since Faraj’s article was published, all three of these suggested technology affordances have become common place on many websites, and, as they predicted, many new ones have come about, especially with the rise of social media platforms. In the article “Social Media Affordances” by Kay Yoon and Yaguang Zhu, they explore how social media affordances affect individual evaluations of transactive memory systems (TMS) and perceived team effectiveness in virtual environments (235). They discuss six affordances that were identified as the most prevalent to this study: visibility, pervasiveness, searchability, editability, self-presentation, and awareness. The study found visibility and searchability affordances had significant positive effects on TMS accuracy. Awareness and pervasiveness affordances had positive effects on TMS sharedness. Lastly, editability and self-presentation affordances had positive effects on validation (252). With these results, the study proves how media affordances can benefit organizations that rely on online communication.

In the past year, discussions concerning affordance have focused on how affordance can help retain customers and inspire loyalty. In “Design is More Than Looks,” Qiong Jia, Yurong Li, and Shan Wang argue that well designed platforms lower a user’s search cost and improve shopping experiences, so companies that wish to stay competitive should be incorporating affordance-based design (3347). Chia-Ying Li, Yu-Hui Fang, and Yu-Hung Chiang also discuss the possibilities of affordance’s role in customer retention in their article “Can AI chatbots help retain customers?”  They found that chatbox affordances positively influences customers through making their experiences more personalized.

Major Principles & Aspects:

As technology and digital platforms continue to evolve, the term affordance continues to need additional classifications and clarifications. Four classifications identified in the literature are social media affordances, organizational media affordances, social commerce affordances, and AI-based customer service affordances. Each of these classifications features specific affordances that tend to arise in the design of platforms created for these purposes.

In 2013, Treem and Leonardi published the article “Social Media use in Organizations,” which identified four affordances commonly found on social medial platforms. They are visibility, editability, persistence, and association. Visibility affords users the ability to share “their behaviors, knowledge, preferences, and communication network connections” with other people on the platform (150). Persistence refers to the ability for communications to continue to exist after the initial post, meaning that someone can scroll back through their content and conversations months, if not years, after it was originally sent (155). Editability affords users the power to spend significant time crafting and revising communications before they are sent and viewed (159). Lastly, association affords users the ability to establish connections with individuals and content (162).

In 2017, Rice et al. expanded on Treem and Leonardi’s ideas in their article “Organizational Media Affordances.” They suggest that there are six prevalent affordances needed for reliable organizational media: pervasiveness; editability; self-presentation; searchability; visibility; and awareness. Some of these affordances are the same as ones needed for social media platforms, but there are slight differences in how these terms are defined. Editability, for example, is not just the ability to edit the communication independently, but there is a need for the ability to edit content collaboratively (113). The meaning for visibility also changes for organization media. In this sense, visibility is the ability to not just to share and see content, but it is also the ability to see how people are engaging with that content (113).

In addition to assigning new values to social media affordances, Rice et al. explore four other affordances needed in organizational media. Pervasiveness affords users the ability to receive responses quickly and communicate while moving, commuting, and traveling (113). Self-presentation affords users the ability to manage their identity or how they might be perceived (125). Searchability allows for users to search using links between content, tags, and keywords that have been applied to content (113). Lastly, awareness is the ability to keep up-to-date on organizational policies and norms as well as know what information others have, what their opinions are, and what activities they have engaged in (113).

In 2019, Lin et al. defined affordances for social commerce in their article “Understanding the Interplay…” These affordances include interactivity, stickiness, and word-of-mouth. Interactivity refers to a user’s perception of the interactivity level of a seller’s social commerce website (214). Stickiness is defined as the ability for social commerce websites to “attract and retain customers,” and it is assessed through users visiting repeatedly and spending significant time browsing (214). Word-of-mouth affords users the ability to exchange information through sharing specifically on social media platforms (214).

The last category of affordance identified in the literature was presented in 2022 in Li and Chang’s article “Chatbots Or Me?” They revisited visibility and association as well as identified additional affordances specific to AI-based customer service tools: anytime/anywhere connectivity and personalization.

In the framework of AI chatbox services, association still refers to the relationships between users to users and users to information, but it expands to encompass the notion that users connect with information through the chatbox service (4). Visibility allows for the effective communication between users and chatbox service agents.

The affordance of anytime/anywhere connectivity “allows users to access services at any moment and from any location” (4).  Li and Chang discuss how this availability can create instant gratification for the user through the immediate and personalized assistance offered. This could then result in positive user experiences and encourage users to engage with AI-based conversational agents again. The affordance of personalization is described as an AI chatbots ability to provide users with “the correct product, information, or solution through the analysis of customers’ personal data and specific needs” (4).

These additional layers that have been added to the original principle of affordance are significant for website designers to understand and incorporate because as they are integrated into web platforms, users will come to expect them, and user experiences will be negatively affected if these affordances are not available.

Application in Digital Media Production:

Affordance has a significant role in web design, specifically user interface (UI), because integrating affordances into web design allows for users to engage with websites easily and intuitively. “UX Design Glossary” classifies the affordances that should be considered in web design according to performance and presentation. The article defines explicit, implicit, graphic, copy, pattern, animated, negative, and false affordances and how these might appear in web design.

Explicit affordances are obvious prompts, like push buttons and text fields, while implicit affordance are “hidden and may be revealed only in a particular flow of users’ actions” (“Explicit and Implicit Affordances”) like drop down menus or information that appears when users hover over specific content.

Graphic affordances help users determine the function of an element and include things like photos, branding signs, illustrations, icons, buttons, fields, and notifications. Photos provide visual support. Branding signs connect content or products to specific brands, which may influence engagement for loyal customers. Illustrations and icons are typically symbolic of the function the represent. The article discusses how a letter icon implies email contact and how a floppy disk icon implies saving information, even after the floppy disk stopped being used. Notifications typically appear as a dot, and they imply that something has yet to be viewed. All of these graphics are designed to hint at their function and simplify interactions on a website.

Copy (language) affordances help user interaction through providing written prompts on that direct engagement, for example a search bar will often have “search” written in the field to prompt the user to type their question. Similarly, buttons will often include a call to action like “schedule now” or “view the article” that tells the reader what will happen when they interact with the element.

Pattern affordances are elements that rely on user habits and common sense developed through engaging with other websites. “UX Design Glossary” explains this concept with the example of logos typically redirecting users to a website’s home page. While that function is not typically accompanied by text, users have come to expect it through pattern.

Animated affordances are features that connect the physical and virtual world by imitating real actions like pushing, swiping, dragging, pulsing, etc. These animations add to emotional appeal and attract a user’s attention. (“Animated Affordances”).

Negative affordances are important to positive experiences because they imply that certain operations are inactive. While this may seem like it could be frustrating for a user, a negative result is still a result, so the user is still getting answer, even if that that is that they cannot engage with an element at the moment (“Negative Affordances”).

The last principle that “UX Design Glossary” discusses is false affordances, which are elements that go against intuition and common sense, misleading the user and resulting in frustrating interactions. The text describes how users have come to expect underlined content to be a link, so including underlined content that does not link to a source leaves users feeling annoying because they believe the link is broken.

Conclusion

Surely, James J. Gibson never expected his use of affordance as a noun, and truly as a replacement for the word value, to create this much discourse or evolve in the way that it has, but this concept has become integral in web design because of how important it is for a user to be able to navigate a website’s information easily and intuitively. Without identifying affordances and isolating the features needed to improve functionality and user experience, engagements on all types of websites would suffer, hindering online communities, ecommerce companies, and so many other organizations vital to society today.

Presentation Link

Work Cited

“Affordance.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affordance. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

“Common sense.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common%20sense. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

Faraj, Samer, et al. “Knowledge Collaboration in Online Communities.” Organization Science, vol. 22, no. 5, Sept. 2011, pp. 1224–39. EBSCOhost, DOI:10.1287/orsc.1100.0614.

Gibson, James J. “The Probable Kinds of Development in Learning to Perceive.” The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. George Allen & Unwin, 1966, pp. 283-285.

“Intuition.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intuition. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

Jia, Q.; Li, Y.; Wang, S. “Design is More Than Looks: Research on the Affordance of Review Components on Consumer Loyalty.” Psychology Research & Behavior Management, [s. l.], v. 15, p. 3347–3366, 2022. DOI: 10.2147/PRBM.S384024.

Li, Chia-Ying, Yu-Hui Fang, and Yu-Hung Chiang. “Can AI Chatbots Help Retain Customers? an Integrative Perspective using Affordance Theory and Service-Domain Logic.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 197, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122921.

Li, Chia-Ying, and Jin-Ting Zhang. “Chatbots Or Me? Consumers’ Switching between Human Agents and Conversational Agents.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, vol. 72, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2023.103264.

Lin, Jiabao, et al. “Understanding the Interplay of Social Commerce Affordances and Swift Guanxi: An Empirical Study.” Information & Management, vol. 56, no. 2, 2019, pp. 213–224, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2018.05.009.

Rice, Ronald E., et al. “Organizational Media Affordances: Operationalization and Associations with Media Use.” Journal of Communication, vol. 67, no. 1, 2017, pp. 106–130, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12273.

Treem, Jeffrey W., and Paul M. Leonardi. “Social Media use in Organizations: Exploring the Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Persistence, and Association.” Annals of the International Communication Association, vol. 36, no. 1, 2013, pp. 143–189, https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2013.11679130.

tubik. “UX Design Glossary: How to Use Affordances in User Interfaces.” Medium, 8 May 2018, uxplanet.org/ux-design-glossary-how-to-use-affordances-in-user-interfaces-393c8e9686e4.

Yoon, Kay, and Yaguang Zhu. “Social Media Affordances and Transactive Memory Systems in Virtual Teams.” Management Communication Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 2, May 2022, pp. 235–60. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1177/08933189211032639.