The concept of affordances originates from ecological psychology; it was proposed by James Gibson (1977, 1979) to denote action possibilities provided to the actor by the environment. In the late 1980s Norman (1988) suggested that affordances be taken advantage of in design. The suggestion strongly resonated with designers’ concern about making possible uses of their products immediately obvious, and soon the concept came to play a central role in interaction design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This chapter discusses the origins, history, and current interpretations of affordances in HCI research, and reflects on the future of affordances as an HCI concept.