Affordance analysis of Google+ applications

The paper aims to analyze the affordances of the digital technology (DT) Google+. Google+ is one of the top social networking tools used by people around the globe. The analysis process was informed by Bower's (2008) functional affordances and Hartson and Pyla's (2012) general and social affordances. The authors highlighted a number of positive and negative affordances of Google+ and suggested ways to maximize and minimize them respectively. The affordance analysis revealed positive support of usability types: ease-of-use, satisfaction, effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, retainability and learnability. Nevertheless, there are many hidden affordances in Google+ applications that require special attention from educators interested in implementing Google+ in learning environments. Google+ affordances enable educators to leverage its applications for personalized learning, learning communities and learning management system (LMS).