{"id":2011,"date":"2023-08-14T18:23:36","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T22:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2011"},"modified":"2023-08-15T09:55:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T13:55:00","slug":"word-of-the-week-affordance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2023\/08\/14\/word-of-the-week-affordance\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Affordance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2023\/08\/affordance.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2012\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2023\/08\/affordance.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot of icons\" width=\"182\" height=\"236\" \/><\/a>This word perplexed me when I first encountered it, during some discussion of software. I recall the statement &#8220;what are the affordances of this particular application?&#8221; I disliked the word instantly, yet now find myself using it, as I draft an article about the affordances of peer tutoring by humans, as compared to the help provided by generative AI.<\/p>\n<p>For a word I find ugly, affordance sure came in handy. To get at the root of our word, even the OED will not quite do. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Affordance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia<\/a>, however, with its crowd-sourced wisdom and peer-editing offers just the affordance we need. According to Psychologist James L. Gibson, who coined the term, affordance involves many factors beyond &#8220;usefulness.&#8221; His definitions cited in the Wikipedia entry involve how a particular environment benefits an animal. When applied to software, which most animals do not use, we see how graphical-user interfaces offer affordances that older command-line interfaces do not.<\/p>\n<p>UNIX users can come lay a beating on me any time they wish to try.<\/p>\n<p>We can dive into the signified\/signifier rabbit hole here, but consider how the smart-phone&#8217;s icon of an envelope connotes e-mail, whereas a phone headset connotes a voice call.\u00a0 The affordances of icon-based systems seem rather obvious; we recognize something immediately, saving us time as compared to looking up that command in a book. Older readers will recall post-it notes all around their desktop monitors with arcane tricks for DOS or other command-line programs.<\/p>\n<p>Coda: industrial design is also all about affordance. Look at everyday items in your home or office and note their affordances. I can heat water in a ceramic cup or my teapot. I suppose I could drink from either, yet each offers different affordances.<\/p>\n<p>If you have useful words or metaphors, by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Screen-shot by the author<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This word perplexed me when I first encountered it, during some discussion of software. I recall the statement &#8220;what are the affordances of this particular application?&#8221; I disliked the word instantly, yet now find myself using it, as I draft an article about the affordances of peer tutoring by humans, as compared to the help &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2023\/08\/14\/word-of-the-week-affordance\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Affordance<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87405,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-2011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-etymology","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-wr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2011"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2014,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions\/2014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}