#2: Affordances

“When we first see an object we have never seen before, how do we know how to use it?” – DOET by Donald A. Norman

I didn’t fully get what the term “affordance” meant initially but after reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, I gained a better understanding of it. The question quoted above got me thinking to myself what is it that is so effective(/not) about the user interface design in Instagram. Nash talks about how there are producers and consumers in every social media. There are new features in Instagram that allows retail brands to promote and sell their products, and how do we know which posts uses that feature and which one doesn’t? Easy- there’s a shopping bag icon at the bottom left of the post. And without anyone telling me, I could’ve guessed that their purpose is to try and sell me whatever that’s in the post. How was I able to tell intuitively? – By common iconography/ symbolism used all around the web and media. Nash also showed us a blogpost, it states “Metaphors in web design might come in the form of words or imagery that’s used to communicate something other than literal meaning. … And maybe that’s the intention; to hint at functionality and invite further exploration.”. I’ll show an example below. 

All these new features that Instagram comes up with seem to benefit retailers and feed consumerism.

References 

  1. Norman, D. (2002). The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.
week 2

nella • July 28, 2018


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