The term ‘affordances’ seems like a simple concept. It explains what you literally and physically do with an object. It explains the object’s physically possible functionalities. In our everyday life we do not usually wonder about the affordances of different objects because most things nowadays are designed in a way that we intuitively know what to do with them. The other day I went to buy a chain lock for my new bicycle. There are probably hundreds of different kinds of chain locks but I immediately recognized it and was able to use it straight away. If I wanted to, I could have used it as a necklace to spice up my outfit. But I didn’t – because I knew it wasn’t meant for that. This exemplifies the term perceived affordances. Perceived affordances are about what the object signals you should to do with it. How it is supposed to be used. To understand these perceived affordances, it is required that you have a certain frame of understanding.

When discussing social medias such as Instagram it becomes more difficult to talk about affordances as these becomes metaphorical. In class we had an interesting discussion about why Instagram is so popular compared to other photo sharing app’s and websites. Looking at Instagram’s technical affordances, they allow you to shoot, edit and publish one or more photos. But almost everybody takes photos with their camera app and not directly through Instagram. Many also use different apps for editing. But why is that? I think it has a lot to do with the habits and norms. A lot of times when you take a photo, you do not immediately post it to Instagram. That could be a big factor here. But when making an Instagram story you would be more likely to actually shoot the photo or video through the app. Perhaps this is because there are different expectations and norms for posts compared to stories. A post is supposed to polished, aesthetic and finished off with a witty, thoughtful or descriptive caption. A story shows what you are doing at this instant and is not expected to be as well thought out as a post. There is a big difference between these two though – one is permanent and the other will disappear after 24 hours.
What I think is interesting here is that you can analyze different features of Instagram in regard to affordances and see how almost the same affordances can have two different outcomes when it comes to how we use them.