The Concept of Affordances

Special Topics in Architecture

Architectural Settings: Herman Hertzberger - Montessori
school in Amsterdam

In the Montessori
school in
Amsterdam,
Hertzberger
enlarged the stair
landing and the void
around it in order
for it to be used as
a gathering area for
students, a vertical
circulation, and as a
classroom
amphitheater.
Ecological units

• An ecological unit is a composite of an 'environment piece' and a

'behavior piece’, which exists at the interface between the
ecological environment and certain practice of molar behavior.
• These units exist in the physiological, social, psychological,
and behavioral realms and share three common attributes:
• they are self-generated, not resulting from the observer’s manipulation;
• they have a time-space locus; and
• they have a boundary separating the internal pattern of the unit from the
external pattern of surround.
Ecological units

• Barker developed a useful analogy for conceptualizing this

relation. He observed that 'molar behavior' is appropriate to the
'ecological environment', just as 'visual perception' is appropriate
to 'light’.
• The ecological unit is the foundation for the concept of a 'behavior
setting’.
• More generally, it seems that this notion captures the relationship
of any organism to its niche under the concept of 'affordance'.
Affordances

• Gibson developed an interactionist view of perception and action

focusing on information that is available in the environment, and
thereby coined the term affordance (Gibson, 1979).
• Gibson (1979) explained his concept of affordance, and pointed out that
the affordances of the environment are what they offer to the animal.
• The different objects of the environment have different affordances for
manipulation.
• “Different patterns of the built environment afford different behaviors and
aesthetic experiences. The affordances of the environment thus limit or
extend the behavioral and aesthetic choices of an individual depending on how
the environment is configured.” (Lang, 1987).
Affordances

• Gibson uses the principles of ecological physics to describe the

properties of substances and surfaces. Such physics considers
functions of the environment at an ecological size level in contrast
to a description in terms of space, time, matter, etc., within
classical physics.
• According to Gibson, the environment consists of a medium,
substances, and surfaces.
• The terrestrial surfaces are walk-able, climb-on-able or fall-off-
able or get-underneath-able or bump-into-able relative to the
animal.
Affordances

• Gibson's insight of affordances states that much information is

needed for perception and action is in the environment as
invariants which can be picked up directly.
• Gibson characterized affordances as properties of objects and
layouts that are specified by information in the array of energy
that is available to an agent's perceptual systems.
• The possibilities of the environment and the way of life of the
animal go together inseparably.
Affordances
Affordances

• The theory of affordances is influenced by Kofka’s (1952) work on

Gestalt psychology, where he states that each thing says what it
is.
• Gibson argues that by looking at objects people perceive their
affordances and not their physical qualities, such as size or color,
as proposed by classical psychologists.
Affordances

• Affordances have to be described relative to the person. For

example, the affordance to sit is relative to the size of an
individual.
• Affordances are measurable aspects of the environment. But they
can only be measured in relation to the individual. Particularly, it
is important to understand the action relevant properties of the
environment in terms of the values intrinsic to the agent.
• Much later work with affordances builds on this fundamental tenet
of ecological psychology.
Affordances

• Gibson's notion of affordances was developed primarily in the

study of visual perception, and his affordances are basically for
environmental things such as substances, media, layouts, events,
etc.
• Gibson hinted that affordances are not only for visual perception,
but also could be for biological processes (e.g., toxin and
nutrition) and cultural (e.g., mail box).
Affordances

• Gibson’s theory principles:

• Senses are a perceptual system
• Sources of perception convey information directly without the
reconstruction by the mind
• Arrays of light are structured at the perceiver’s point. When a person
moves, this structure changes.
• People move to explore and dig for more information and finer details.
• The world consists of surfaces that have textures, and texture reveal
depth.
• Surfaces hide other surfaces (occlusion)
Affordances

• Gibson discussed (places and hiding places, the optical information for
perceiving affordances and misinformation for affordances).
• The concealing of oneself from other observers and the hiding of a
detached object from other observers has different kinds of motivation.
• Gibson believed that the central question for the theory of affordances
is whether the information is available in ambient light for perceiving
them.
• Gibson discussed if there is misinformation in the ambient light for the
affordances of things, and if misinformation leads to misperception
results.
The Niche

• The natural environment offers many ways of life, and different

animals have different ways of life. The concept of a niche in
ecology reflects this fact.
• The niche implies a kind of animal, and the animal implies a kind
of niche.
• There are all kinds of offerings in the world that have been taken
advantage of and niches that have been occupied. Nevertheless,
there may be many offerings of the environment that have not
been taken advantage of, and niches that are not occupied yet.
The Niche

• The organism depends on its environment for its life, but the
environment does not depend on the organism for its existence.
• Man have changed the shapes and substances of his environment
to change what it affords him. He made what benefits him and
less pressing what injures him by making life easier for himself.
• Over the millennia, he made it easier for himself to get food,
easier to keep warm, to see at night, to get about and to train his
offspring.
• Of course, he made life harder for most of the other animals.
The Niche

• In his book (The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception), Gibson

explained, that the different places of a habitat may have
different affordances.
• There are places where food is usually found, and others where it
is not. There are places of danger, such as the brink of a cliff and
the regions where predators lurk.
• Animals are skilled at what the psychologist calls place-learning,
they can find their way to significant places.
Natural vs Artificial Environments

• Gibson noted that we live in is not a new environment, but the same old
environment modified by man to be an artificial environment.
• He said It is a mistake to separate the natural from the artificial as if
there were two environments. Artifacts have to be manufactured from
natural substances.
• It is also a mistake to separate the cultural environment from the
natural environment, as if there were a world of mental products
distinct from the world of material products.
• There is only one world, however diverse, and all animals live in it.
Behavior Affords Behavior

• Behavior affords behavior, and the whole subject matter of psychology and of
the social sciences can think of as an elaboration of this basic fact.
• Gibson (1979) explained that the richest and most elaborate affordances of the
environment are provided by other animals and for us, other people.
• They move from place to place, changing the postures of their bodies.
• The other animals afford, above all, a rich and complex set of interactions,
sexual, predatory, nurturing, fighting, playing, cooperating, and
communicating.
• They interact with the observer and with one another.
• What other persons afford comprises the whole realm of social significance for
human beings.
After Gibson

• Donald A. Norman, took Gibson’s theory of affordances and

extended it into a prescriptive formulation.
• Norman gave some guidelines as to what certain objects should
afford and should not afford.
• However, Norman, in his book (The Psychology of Everyday
Things, also published as The Design of Everyday Things,
1988), is concerned primarily with “everyday things” and not
the design of artifacts in general.
After Gibson

• Other researchers have advanced affordance-based methods as

well, in particular the Function-Task-Interaction-Matrix developed
by Galvao and Sato (2005).
• Function-Task-Interaction-Matrix FTIM is a template to present the
relationships between the technical functions and the users tasks.
• The idea of affordance has also been applied in the field of
artificial intelligence, e.g., how to design robots that
recognize affordances in their environment (Murphy, 1999).
After Gibson

• Maier and Fadel have advocated the application of the theory of

affordances to engineering design.
• They consider affordances to be “potential uses” of a device. This
means that the human is able to do something using the device.
They stress that the device allows the user to behave in such a
way that neither could manifest alone. That is, the device
‘affords’ the possibility of the user’s behavior. Their examples
include: a typewriter affords typing behavior to a person.
Distributed Cognition

• Distributed cognition is a scientific discipline that is concerned

with how cognitive activity is distributed across internal human
minds, external cognitive artifacts, and groups of people, and how
it is distributed across space and time.
• In this view, people’s intelligent behavior results from interactions
with external cognitive artifacts and with other people,… and
people's activities in concrete situations are guided, constrained,
and to some extent, determined by the physical, cultural, and
social contexts in which they are situated.
 The distributed cognition framework of
affordances
(A) The representation
spaces are described by
constraints. The
affordance space is the
disjunction of the
external and internal
representation spaces.
(B) (B) The representation
spaces are described by
possible actions. The
affordance space is the
conjunction of the
external and internal
representation spaces.
The distributed cognition framework of
affordances

• Under the distributed cognition framework, affordances are

distributed representations extended across external (the
environment) and internal (the organism) representations.
• External representations belong to the environment; and internal
representations belong to the organism.
• External representations can be at the levels of chemical
processes, physical configurations, spatio-temporal layouts, and
symbolic structures, which correspond to the levels for internal
representations: biological mechanisms inside the body, the
physique of the organism, perceptual systems, and cognitive
structures and processes.
 The distributed cognition framework of
affordances

A categorization of
affordances from the
perspective of distributed
cognition.
The distributed cognition framework of
affordances

• This framework can generate a categorization of affordances;

biological, physical, perceptual, cognitive and mixed.
• Biological Affordance: Biological affordance is based on biological
processes. For example, a healthy mushroom affords nutrition,
while a toxic mushroom affords dying. This is at the level of
biology.
The distributed cognition framework of
affordances

• Physical Affordance: Physical affordance is for tasks that are

mainly constrained by physical structures. For example, an open
environment affords locomotion in any direction over the ground,
whereas a cluttered environment affords locomotion only at
opening.
• Perceptual Affordance: In this category, affordances are mainly
provided by spatial mappings. For example, if the switches of the
stovetop burners have the same spatial layout as the burners
themselves, the switches provide affordances for controlling the
burners. Another example is the pictorial signs for ladies' and
men's restrooms in airports.
The distributed cognition framework of
affordances
• Cognitive Affordance. Affordances of this type are provided by cultural
conventions. For example, for traffic lights, red means "stop", yellow
means "prepare to stop", and green means "go".
• Mixed Affordance: Many affordances are provided by a combination of
more than one module. For example, shoelace affords tying shoes. This
affordance is a conjunction of physical affordance and cognitive
affordance: the physical property of shoelace and the knowledge of how
to make a tie. The “mailbox” example given by Gibson is also a mixed
affordance. A mailbox does not provide the affordance of mailing letters
for a person who has no knowledge about postal systems. In this case,
knowledge (cognitive affordance) and structure of a mailbox (physical
affordance) are both involved in constructing the affordance for mailing
and receiving letters.
Gaver’s framework “Perceptible Affordance
and Hidden Affordance”

• Gaver like Gibson sees affordances as possible actions afforded by

an object or environment as existing regardless of whether or not
they are perceived.
• He separated affordances from the information available about
them and that allows him to generate four category of affordance
(correct rejections and perceived, hidden and false affordances).
Gaver’s framework “Perceptible Affordance
and Hidden Affordance”

• He clarified these categories as follow:

• Perceptible affordances exist where information on the actions
that are afforded are perceptible to the user. These are very
dependent on language, culture, context, experience, etc. and
vary for different users.
• Hidden affordances are actions that are possible but may not be
visible. They may be inferred false affordances that are present if
users perceive an environment that affords actions that are not
possible. Correct rejection occurs when there is neither the
affordance nor the misperception of its existence.
Gaver’s framework “Perceptible Affordance
and Hidden Affordance”

• Gaver’s framework “Perceptible Affordance and Hidden

Affordance” makes sense, but False Affordance is problematic to
the logic. It is not the affordance that is false rather it is the
information that is false.
• Gibson uses the term misinformation to describe this phenomenon
when misinformation is picked up by an actor, then misperception
results.
• Gibson acknowledges that the “line between the pickup of
misinformation and the failure to pick up information is hard to
draw.(Gibson, 1979).
 Gaver’s framework “Perceptible Affordance
and Hidden Affordance”

Separating affordances
from the information
available about them
allows the distinction
among correct
rejections and
perceived, hidden and
false affordances.