Incoordination and Instagram
I come from a relatively clumsy family. Both my sister and father have have long lanky legs and are therefore constantly either falling over or banging their heads on things. Thankfully, in some ways, I was not blessed with long legs but somehow still inherited the uncoordinated gene. Some of my fondest memories include somehow falling over while standing in a sport class resulting in a twisted ankle, running into a pole in primary school and more recently, tripping up stairs at university. Just the other day I walked into a glass door at Melbourne Central thinking it was automatic. Honestly, most of my unfortunate incidents can largely be attributed to my lack of coordination, however, I have realised that some can be attributed to poor design.
source: <https://www.funnyordie.com/2014/6/3/17741414/we-re-giving-you-animals-what-you-want-22-gifs-of-people-falling-down-stairs>
The term affordances considers the relations between an object and the person interacting with it. It ‘refers to the perceived and actual properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used’ (Norman 1998), and consider literally any possible action one could do with an object. For example, an affordance of a book is that one can read it, but one can also throw it at someone, both of which are affordances. Perceived affordances, on the other hand, refer to what the user perceives to be possible when utilising an object (Norman 1999).
In his book ‘The design of everyday things’ Norman (1998) asserts that the concept of affordances can be utilised in the field of design in order to better convey the uses of a specific object. So, back to my incoordination problems, perhaps if the glass door at Melbourne Central was designed with the concept of affordances in mind it might have better conveyed that it would not, in fact, open automatically when I walked near it.
Bringing this concept back to the context of this course, affordances is a key aspect of the prompt that is guiding our learning throughout the semester.
How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?
I got Instagram for the first time when I was around fifteen, shortly after I downloaded Snapchat. I soon became absolutely addicted to Snapchat, something about the lack of permanence (unless you’re betrayed by screenshotters) and it feeling a bit more personal. When Instagram introduced its story feature my first thought was why would anyone use that, now I pretty much only use Instagram.
When all these apps were first introduced, their interfaces were much more simplistic. Moreover, each app had more of a separate function. As each of these social networking apps have developed they became more complex, I do not have much trouble using them but I know for a fact that someone who has not used social media to the extent I have may have trouble with understanding the affordances of the app. I have a friend who doesn’t use Instagram, and she was on my phone stalking people and accidentally liked a photo. She thought double tapping would zoom in on the photo but it actually resulted in ‘liking’ the photo. Reflecting back, there’s no design feature that indicates that the action of double tapping the photo affords ‘liking’ the photo.
source: <http://www.lovethispic.com/image/329283/when-you-accidentally-like-someone%27s-instagram-pic-from-47-weeks-ago>
I imagine my ability to utilise Instagram comes from previous experiences with other apps and software where similar actions result in similar outcomes but also just through use over time. One of my grandmas can’t use a brick phone and the other is addicted to her iPad and somehow has two Facebook accounts, so I suppose there’s a multitude of factors that contribute to technology literacy and understanding the perceived affordances of social media.
References:
Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York
Norman, D 1999, ‘Affordance, conventions and design (Part 2)’, Nielsen Norman Group, viewed 20 March 2019, http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordance_conv.html