The Affordance U

The Landscape of “Affordance” Concept Ecology

The above diagram is part of an unfinished project: Affordance Analysis.

The Affordance U diagram is based on the HERO U diagram. In 2020, I adopted the HERO U diagram to run a knowledge curation project about Activity Theory. I made a similar diagram:

The Activity U diagram led to a series of articles, two books about Activity Theory, and one knowledge center: Activity Analysis Center. It is a wonderful three-year journey.

In fact, I made the Activity U diagram and the Affordance U diagram in August 2020. However, the Affordance U diagram didn’t lead to a successful project.

This morning I saw a tweet about a new book titled Affordances in Everyday Life: A Multidisciplinary Collection of Essays.

Zakaria Djebbara, the editor of the book, just did what I planned to do. Congrats to Zakaria! This is a fantastic project!

The book also reminds me of the Affordance U diagram and the Affordance Analysis Project.

I’d like to share the story behind the Affordance U diagram and close the Affordance Analysis Project.

The Affordance Analysis Project

The concept of Affordance was coined and developed by the ecological psychologist James. Gibson in his book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.

Why did I want to work on the Affordance Analysis Project?

Before 2014, I spent most of my spare time in digital non-profit communities as a digital activist. From 2014 to 2015, I transformed my focus from nonprofit activities to theoretical learning. Since then, I have been spending most of my spare time learning Ecological Psychology, Creativity Research, and other related subjects.

2014–2020: Ecological Psychology and Creativity Research
2014–2018: Action Science, Activity Theory, and Cognitive Science
2018–2019: Practice Theory, HCI, Strategy, and Work
2020: Social Theory, Social Media, Information Systems, and Platform

After learning Ecological Psychology for five years, I wrote a book titled Curativity from Sept 2018 to March 2019. During the process of writing, I developed a new theoretical approach called the Ecological Practice Approach which aims to build an Affordance-based theory of action and adopt ideas of Ecological Psychology for analyzing various social practices.

In April 2020, I wrote a book titled After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action and introduced the second version of the Ecological Practice Approach. Then, I didn’t know what the next project should be in May 2020.

One month later, I wrote an article about “Ecological Complexity” and used it to frame a “Trilogy”: Studies in Ecological Complexity.

• Affordance Analysis: From Potential to Actual
• After Affordance: From Attach to Detach
• Curativity: From Pieces to Whole

You can find more details about “Ecological Complexity” here.

The Affordance Analysis Project was designed with the following two parts:

• Empirical Analysis
• Conceptual Analysis

The Empirical Analysis focuses on my five years of observation of my two sons’ childhood. I have been watching them for many years in various environments. They often use objects in “unofficial” ways. From the perspective of ecological psychology, they are “officially” taking affordances of objects. I took many photos to record these “creative” moments in our life.

The Conceptual Analysis focuses on my reading of academic papers about the concept of Affordance since it has been influencing many psychologists, philosophers, artists, architects, designers, interaction scholars, information system researchers, etc. Many followers have been developing affordance-inspired concepts which form a web of concepts that I called Concept Ecology.

In fact, I didn’t work on the Affordance Analysis project in 2020.

In June 2020, I moved to an application of Curativity Theory: the Knowledge Curation project. The project led to a new Trilogy:

• Activity U: a book about the landscape of Activity Theory
• Project-oriented Activity Theory: a book about the project-oriented approach
• The ECHO Way: a book about the ECHO model which is the knowledge framework for the above two books.

In Oct 2020, I developed a new theoretical concept called Supportance. It led to the following projects:

• The Lifesystem framework (Dec 2020)
• Platform for Development: a book about the ecological approach to adult development (March 2021)

Now I have a real “Trilogy” of Studies in Ecological Complexity:

• After Affordance
• Platform for Development
• Curativity

On April 26, 2021, I reviewed the historical development of the Ecological Practice approach and shared its third version.

So, what’s the value of the concept of “Ecological Complexity”? It was just a mediating tool for framing a meaning whole. I used the concept to define a “Trilogy” and used it to frame my work. However, we don’t have to be framed by a frame if we have new choices. The application of “Knowledge Curation” was a new choice. The concept of “Supportance” was a new choice.

To be honest, the Affordance Analysis was not the priority of my knowledge enterprise. Though the concept of Affordance is the starting point of the Ecological Practice approach, my focus is on expanding the ecological approach to the level of social analysis.

Will I return to the Affordance Analysis project? Probably not. If you have a model of your creative work, then you can use this model to guide your actions. You don’t need extrinsic motivation to drive you. And you can modify your models if you have new choices.

Though I didn’t complete the Affordance Analysis Project, I did work on something about the concept of Affordance. For example, the Concept Dynamics Framework is a by-product of the Affordance Analysis Project.

The Landscape of “Affordance” Concept Ecology

From 2014 to 2017, I often read academic papers about the concept of Affordance. In the beginning, I read papers in the field of ecological psychology. Then, Cognitive Science, Creativity Research, Design, HCI, Social Media, Information Systems, etc.

How many academic papers about the concept of Affordance did I read in the past years?

I didn’t count the number because it became one of my habits. I guess that the number should be more than 300.

This experience inspired me to plan the Conceptual Analysis part of the Affordance Analysis project. I made several diagrams to visualize my thoughts.

The above diagram is based on the HERO U diagram. I have used the same diagram for the Activity U project. The Affordance U diagram and the Activity U diagram adopt the same meta-diagram, but they present two types of the landscape of concept ecology.

The Activity U diagram represents a larger knowledge enterprise which can be considered a giant tree while the Affordance U presents a loose web of concepts that can be considered a garden where you can see many small trees.

Moreover, there are two key facts during the development of Activity Theory. The first thing is Yrjö Engeström’s contribution. He developed the activity triangle model or activity system which is very popular in various domains such as learning and education, HCI (human-computer interaction) research and design, information science, organization, management, etc. The second thing is cross-location communication and collaboration. Yrjö Engeström is based in Northern Europe, he built a community called the Scandinavian AT school. In the West, Michael Cole built cultural psychology, Bonnie A. Nardi brought AT to HCI research. These new generation researchers form CHAT as a whole for Activity Theory. It is a wonderful collective intellectual work.

For the concept of Affordance, there is another kind of landscape. Though William M. Mace mentioned the cross-discipline influence of Affordance in the classic edition of Gibson’s book, I see there are more radical variations than systematic development. Researchers from different fields adopted the concept of Affordance and modified its definition to fit their own contexts. Eventually, the concept of Affordance became a buzzword. The original theoretical value behind the word was lost in the process.

I am so sad to see this situation. This also means an opportunity for theory building. There is a need to build an affordance-based ecological approach for interdisciplinary research.

After roughly reviewing some papers about the concept of Affordance from several fields, I made the above diagram and summarized five ways of appropriating the concept of Affordance:

• Informing Affordance: This way focuses on telling users Affordances of objects. Designers tend to adopt this way because they want users to understand the designed features.
• Concrete Affordance: This way is also called the Ecological approach, they deal with physical environments and adopt Gibson’s concept of Affordance without modifications. This way pays attention to concrete situations.
• Abstract Affordance: This way is very popular in the field of digital environments such as Information systems, Social Media, Digital platforms, Organization Science, etc. Scholars from these fields want to use the concept of Affordance, but they find it is so hard to define Environments for them. Thus, they move to use the concept of Affordance at the abstract level without considering concrete situations.
• Affordance System: This way expands the theoretical model of affordance from the original “environment — organism” relationship to a multiple-part system such as the “human — robot — object — environment” system.
• Affordism: This way adopts the concept of Affordance as a philosophical idea to support theoretical debates and theoretical building.

My own approach is to return to Gibson’s ecological approach and adopt its core: the Ecological Physics Method. You can find more details here.

I also conducted a genetic analysis of the development of the “Affordance” concept ecology. See the above diagram. I found there are six moments of the development process:

• Perceive: A person perceives a brand new reality in the real-life world and discovers its theoretical value.
• Primary Conceptualize: The person conceptualizes his insights and develops a brand new theoretical concept.
• Secondary Conceptualize: The original theoretical concept is adopted and modified by others. This moment generates first-order variation and second-hand concepts.
• Tertiary Conceptualize: A second-hand concept is adopted and modified by others without returning to the original theoretical concept. This moment generates second-order variation and third-hand concepts.
• Meta Conceptualize: This moment is about reflecting and reviewing the developmental process of a concept ecology.
• Deconstruct: People use the word part of the concept without deeply considering its theoretical meaning and value. An awesome theoretical concept became a buzzword.

This model is pretty interesting because it clearly describes the source of the complexity of a concept ecology. It also points out a possible solution to solve the problem of knowledge overload.

A by-product of an unfinished project

Though I didn’t finish the Affordance Analysis project, the project produced a by-product called Concept Dynamics.

If you pay attention to the diagram, you will find the following terms:

• Ecological Reality: Personal Knowledge
• Conceptual Reality: Public Knowledge
• Linguistic Reality: Ordinary Language

Originally, I used these terms to define different zones of Concept Ecology. Later, I realized that it can be used to develop a new framework. The above case study is only about the “Affordance” concept ecology. There are many ways to create new concepts. Not all theoretical concepts start from the Ecological Reality.

Eventually, I developed a non-linear model of concept creation. I called it Concept Dynamics. See the diagram below.

On July 31, 2020, I used the metaphor of Hammer to write an article about Affordance and I introduced the above framework in the article.

The article reviews many versions of the concept of affordance. According to Davis and Chouinard (2017), the concept of affordance is integral to scholarly analysis across multiple fields, “Affordance has emerged as a central analytic tool within science and technology studies, ecological psychology, communication studies, and design fields… As an interdisciplinary construct, affordance is both persistent and pervasive across literatures. The term’s development and diffusion have generated both keen analytic insight and also, dense theoretical and philosophical debate.”

I’d like to suggest three views on the concept of affordance:

• Ecological affordance: this is the original version offered by Gibson.
• Universal affordance: this is an interdisciplinary construct for analysis.
• Affordism: this is a philosophical view inspired by Gibson’s ideas.

Since many authors coined their own version of affordance, I use Ecological Affordance to refer to Gibson’s original version. For Gibson, an affordance is a statement about the mutuality of the animal and environment, it is “…an affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjeceive property; or it is both if you like. An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and help us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer.” (Gibson, 1979, p.121). Psychologists usually place their theoretical concepts either in the environment (objective) or the mind (subjective). Gibson didn’t agree with both sides. In other words, Gibson was against Cartesian dualism (Mind-body dualism). This is the core of Gibson’s ecological approach.

In other words, ecological affordance is about Ecological Reality. Gibson said, “The world of physical reality does not consist of meaningful things. The world of ecological reality, as I have been trying to describe it, does. If what we perceived were the entities of physics and mathematics, meanings would have to be imposed on them. But if what we perceive are the entities of environmental science, their meanings can be discovered.” (1979, p.28) If we want to keep using Gibson’s original version of affordance for the modern technological environment, we need to consider humans acting in the digital environment as an ecological reality. This is why I adopted the whole Ecological Physics Method for studying Twitterville.

The Concept Dynamics Framework emphasizes that every theoretical concept has three basic aspects: ecological reality, conceptual reality, and linguistic reality.

• Ecological Reality refers to the real experience of discovery in the real world from the perspective of researchers.
• Conceptual Reality refers to the outcome of the creative conceptualization process.
• Linguistic Reality refers to expressional form with verbal and rhetorical effects.

Based on the framework, I believe that an ideal theoretical concept should not have intrinsic contradictions between these three aspects and extrinsic contradictions between these aspects and context which means the dynamic background of the concept. Thus, it is hard work to create an ideal theoretical concept. The harder work is detaching an existing concept from its original context and attaching it to a new context by reconceptualizing it with new meaning.

This is the complete story of the Concept Dynamics Framework. Now we can understand that it is not only about one concept, but also about a concept ecology.

I See It: The Relevance of “Ecological Reality”

What I learned from the concept of “Affordance” is the relevance of “Ecological Reality”.

As mentioned above, “Ecological Reality” refers to seeing a theoretical concept in the real-life world. After learning Affordance Theory, I realized that the Gap between Theory and Practice is the “Ecological Reality”. Many theoretical concepts are great in Conceptual Reality and Linguistic Reality, but they fail in the test of “Ecological Reality”.

Why?

Because it’s easy to create new knowledge concepts by only working on Conceptual Reality and Linguistic Reality with some creative heuristic tools. Then, we share these new concepts by writing articles or publishing academic papers without testing their Ecological Reality.

It’s hard to test new concepts in the real-life world because it costs time and energy.

In order to emphasize the relevance of “Ecological Reality” for concept creation, I used the slogan “I See It” to describe this notion. I even designed a visual identity for the notion and the Concept Dynamics framework.

The above is the symbol of the Concept Dynamics Project. One circle means a concept as a whole while three lines mean the above three aspects.

The above is the logotype of the Concept Dynamics Project. It reuses the three-line visual idea.

I also used “I See It” to guide concept creation for my projects. For example, the concept of “Container”.

One day in 2017, I saw a sideways flower pot in a local supermarket. As a guy who was not familiar with gardening, I was curious about such a container and the plants it contains. I used to think that plants always grow upward. That day, I was surprised that there are some plants that grow horizontally. I feel ashamed of my ignorance of botany.

A Sideways flower pot and a spilling flower (Oliver Ding, 2017)

This dramatic experience inspired me to reflect on the concept of Container. In 2017, I was fascinated with George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor Container and image schema Containment. For Lakoff and Johnson, Container refers to in-out orientation and boundary of space. After the day, I moved my attention from the boundary of the container to the dynamic relationship between the Container and the Things it contains. I coined a new term called “Containee” in order to simply represent “Things contained by Container”.

The sideways flower pot taught me an invaluable lesson in which I learned the initial idea of the ecological practice approach. Though a plant is held by a container, the living space occupied by the plant in the world is beyond the interior space of the container. Later, I theorized this phenomenon with the following terms and diagrams.

• Inside Space: the interior space of the container.
• Outside Space: the exterior space of the container.
• Spilling Space: the living space occupied by the containee.

We have to notice that the Spilling Space is a dynamic space because it can be smaller than the inside space or bigger than the outside space. In this way, the spilling space connects the inside space and the outside space.

I saw the concept of “Container” in the real-life world in a way that is different from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor Container and image schema Containment.

In 2019, I continuously worked on developing “container thinking” with the idea of the Container System. Eventually, it became the foundation of my theoretical account: the Ecological Practice approach.

You can find more details about it in Platform, Platform-ba, and Platform Ecology.

The Need for Knowledge Curation

The Concept Dynamics Framework also leads to an insight into contemporary knowledge building.

Knowledge creators tend to create various concepts, theories, frameworks, models, etc. Their creativity drives them to make unique and general ideas. Eventually, they build a highly fragmented knowledge ecology that is not accessible to ordinary people.

Moreover, some knowledge concepts are only good at Conceptual Reality and Linguistic Reality without testing their Ecological Reality.

In 2019 I developed Curativity Theory for understanding general curation practice and wrote a book. In 2020, I started the Knowledge Curation project which aims to apply Curativity Theory to connect Theory and Practice. From the perspective of Curativity Theory, ordinary people need to add “Curation” to develop their minds.

Traditionally, researchers tend to use “perception, conception, and action” as three keywords to discuss mind-related topics. From the perspective of Curativity Theory which is about turning pieces into a meaningful whole, I want to expand the foundation of mind-related topics from three keywords to four keywords.

The Epistemology of Curation refers to considering pieces of perceiving experience, pieces of concepts, pieces of actions at a level and moving to a higher level to curate these pieces into a meaningful whole. In recent articles, I called it the Curated Mind (1, 2).

A Move from “Affordance” to “Concept”

Now the Affordance Analysis Project is closed.

However, I am still working on the Concept Dynamics Project.

What a magic move!

I just moved from a thematic space about “Affordance” to a thematic space about “Concept”!

Life is the flow of moving between thematic spaces!

Related Articles

• HERO U — A New Framework for Knowledge Heroes — June 26, 2020
• The Knowledge Curation Toolkit #1: Theme U for Single-theory Curation — June 19, 2022
• The Knowledge Curation Toolkit #2: WXMY for Interdisciplinary Curation — June 24, 2022
• The Knowledge Curation Toolkit #4: Project I and The HERO I Canvas — July 23, 2022
• Activity U : The Landscape of Activity Theory (Part I) — August 10, 2020
• Activity U — A Knowledge Curation Project — Dec 8, 2020
• Theme U: The AAS Framework and its applications — August 26, 2022
• The ECHO Way (v2.0) — June 30, 2021
• Life Discovery: The “Present — Future” Fit and The ECHO Way — Feb 20, 2022