CONCEPT
Affordance Structure
The full field of offerings an environment provides — what it makes <em>perceivable, easy, and available</em> versus what it hides, makes difficult, or eliminates entirely.
An affordance structure is the ecological architecture of a designed environment — the totality of what it offers for action, ordered by how salient each offering is to the perceiving organism. Every technology is an affordance structure, and the structure shapes behavior not by compelling it but by specifying what actions are available, easy, and perceivable. The smartphone's affordance structure privileges swiping, checking, and scrolling. The command line's privileges precise specification. The conversational AI interface's privileges continued prompting, immediate iteration, and the acceptance of polished output. These structures are not neutral. They are the engineered products of design choices that determine, often invisibly, what users will do before they have consciously chosen to do it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The affordance structure concept operationalizes Gibson's ecological approach for designed environments. Where Gibson mostly analyzed natural affordances — surfaces, layouts, substances — the affordance structure idea extends the framework to environments whose offerings are deliberately engineered. The smartphone is not a cliff; the notification badge was designed by someone. This