The concept of affordance was originally proposed by James J. Gibson in 1979. Gibson’s did not differentiate humans from animals and his idea was that, “animals directly perceive affordances as possibilities for action in the environment” (Keptelinin & Nardi, 2012).These possible actions are determined by objective properties found in the environment and by the action capabilities of the animals (Keptelinin & Nardi, 2012). His defition of affordance involved following theories: “(1) affordances are perceived directly; their perception is not based on an interpretation of initially meaningless “raw” sensory data, (2) affordances are relational properties; they emerge in the interaction between the animal and environment: the same environment may offer different affordances to different animals, (3) affordances are independent of the situational needs of the perceiver, (4) natural environments and cultural environments should not be separated from one another, and (5) the theory of affordances is concerned with how affordances are perceived rather than affordances per se.”(Keptelinin & Nardi, 2012) Only later on in 1988 Donald Norman introduced this notion of affordances to HCI where he described it as the “perceived and actual properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used” (Norman, 1988). Norman - contrary to Gibson - links affordances and their perception with the preexisting experience and knowledge an individual already has about it (McGrenere & Ho, 2000). Further, in 1999 he differentiates between “real affordances” which are the same as the affordances Gibson describes in his theory and “perceived affordances” which may not even be real (Kaptelinin, 2014). Norman is convinced that in HCI affordances can be used to support a successful interaction when considered in the design process and claims affordances can substitute support for simple systems (Keptelinin & Nardi, 2012)(McGrenere & Ho, 2000). Keptelinin and Nardi (2012) argue that affordance has a limited scope and its scope cannot be broadened to anything beyoned the definition of Gibson. However, they do admit that Gibson’s theory doesn’t include some central HCI phenomena and further state, that another theory is needed which includes these HCI topics in its agenda. A similar view is held by McGrenere and Ho (2000) who critique that the term affordance is still missing specific distinction and emphasize that Gibson’s theory lacks some notions which are crucial in HCI. With ongoing discussions about the scope and the definition of the term affordance it is most commonly described in HCI as possibilities which are offered by technologies. This notion will be further adapted in our studies.

Kaptelinin, V., & Nardi, B. (2012, May). Affordances in HCI: toward a mediated action perspective. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 967-976).

McGrenere, J., & Ho, W. (2000, May). Affordances: Clarifying and evolving a concept. In Graphics interface (Vol. 2000, pp. 179-186).

Kaptelinin, V. (2014). Affordances and design. The interaction design foundation.

Norman, D. A. (1988). The psychology of everyday things. Basic books.