Affordance as Meaningfulness

Andrew Basden.

ABSTRACT The notion of affordance has recently been called upon to account for the impact of the shape of ICT on human and organisational activity. It originated with Gibson in the field of ecological psychology and there it has aroused considerable debate about its nature and effectiveness as a conceptual device. In proportion, much less debate about the nature of affordance has taken place in the field of information systems. Instead, researchers have adopted the notion and suggested classifications of affordances, which do not always correspond with each other. On what basis may we relate these to each other, and translate the insights gained in ecological psychology to other fields? This article reviews the notion of affordance in the fields of ecological psychology, of artefacts (HCI) and IS, and discovers confusion in all fields. Usually, affordance is seen as activity or relationship, but most discussions of affordance indicate that meaningfulness is central.

This article explores the implications of treating affordance as meaningfulness, usually as a pair of ways of being meaningful. Three origins of meaningfulness are discussed: subjective, intersubjective (socially constructed) and meaningfulness as an ocean in which we exist and function, and which itself enables that existing and functioning. Possible contributions to IS theory and practice are discussed. A philosophical foundation on which to develop the idea of affordance as meaningfulness is briefly outlined.

Keywords: Affordance, socio-technical affordances, information systems use, subject-object divide, meaning, Dooyeweerd.

Affordance as Meaningfulness

1. INTRODUCTION

Affordance is a notion that has recently become attractive (Bloomfield et al. 2010) in the IS field as a way to achieve this. It emerged from an original idea by the psychologists James and Eleanor Gibson in the 1950s, where it has become "one of the central concepts in the ecological approach to perception and action" (Stoffregen 2000, 1). First it was used to explain animal behaviour (Gibson 1966) and James Gibson wrote the groundbreaking work, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception in 1979, in which the notion of affordance is discussed reflectively. Then Donald Norman found the idea attractive to understand human experience of artefacts including the computer user interface (Norman 1988). Now affordance is suggested to understand the impact of technology on sociality (Hutchby 2001). In each case, others followed and interest grew.

Gibson originally defined affordance as:

"The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes." (Gibson 1979, 127, his italics)

For example, a rock affords an animal the possibility of of sitting or climbing, because it is horizontal, flat, rigid (p.132). "The verb to afford is found in the dictionary," explains Gibson (1979, 127), "but the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does." The idea of affordance opened up the field of ecological psychology, generating large bodies of debate and empirical research and the formation of new journals like Ecological Psychology.

In the IS field, in place of the physical and psychical aspects, informational, social and managerial aspects are of primary interest. For example, social media afford 'network-informed association' (Majchrzak et al. 2013), while ICT in organisations afford 'virtual collaboration' (Zammuto et al. 2007). The animal is replaced by the ICT user and the environment is no longer composed of rocks and holes, but of ICT and the organisational context. Affordance in the IS field - socio-technical affordance - has been defined as a potential for action (Majchrzak & Markus 2012), which is determined, not by either the agent alone nor the environment or IS facilities alone, but by the relationship between them.

The notion of affordance has become attractive partly because it bridges the subject-object divide (see later) and partly because it addresses issues of everyday life. Yet there are different views of what the notion of affordance offers researchers in IS, and how the notion in one field translates across to others, with much ambiguity about the concept, there is inconsistency in the terminology used and controversy about the ontological nature of technology (Majchrzak et al. 2013). This might be expected since the notion of affordance is relatively new in IS, and we might look to the considerable discourse in ecological psychology for inspiration and help. This raises the the question of how to translate insights appropriately from that field across to IS. For example, the idea of action has obvious parallels between the two fields, but how does a concept like body-scale (Warren & Whang 1987) translate across to IS? It would be beneficial to capitalise on the discourse in ecological psychology and HCI in order to gain an understanding of the idea of affordance that carries across to the IS field. Examination of these fields reveals confusion there too, however, especially around the subject-object (agent-environment) relationship. Now that a mass of ideas has accumulated about affordance from several fields, it is perhaps time to reconsider the foundations of the idea in a way that makes sense in all fields.

This paper reviews some of the discussions of affordance in the fields of ecological psychology, of artefact design (including human-computer interaction, HCI), and of IS, identifying where some of the confusion lies. It then suggests that affordance may be seen as meaningfulness - each kind of affordance seen as a pair of ways of being meaningful, which describes both how the agent acts and how the environment responds. Several contributions are discussed, not least that of bridging the subject-object divide.

The word 'agent' will be used to denote both animals and users of ICT. 'Environment' will be denote that with which the agent engages, from the animal's rock to the ICT facilities and the wider organisational context in IS.

2. AFFORDANCES

2.1 Gibsonian Affordance

The idea of affordance caught on, attracting considerable attention, because it seemed to address an issue for which no adequate conceptual frameworks were available, that of behaviour in an environment, and it did so in exciting and courageous ways that challenge traditional ideas. Empirical research into specific affordances ensued, such as of ball-punching (Michaels et al. 2001), stair-climbing (Mark 1987), walking up slopes (Kinsella-Shaw et al. 1992), stepping over (Pufall & Dunbar 1992; Jiang & Mark 1994), sitting (Mark 1987), passing through holes (Warren & Whang 1987), passing under bariiers (van der Meer 1997), and reaching (Carello et al. 1989). This was paralleled by discussion about the nature of affordance.

Gibson stressed the primacy of perception over sensation (Nakayama 1994). From this, Gibson (1979) developed his theory of affordances, stressing the relationship between the agent and the environment (note: not just of objects, but of layouts and systems too). Body scale, such as height of rock compared with length of leg, became important. Affordances are not relative to the animal as a mere observer, but to the animal as active agent (Gibson 1977, 79); affordances occur (have effect) without the agent being aware of them. Gibson makes reference to Polanyi's (1967) 'tacit dimension'.

Gibson was a radical empiricist (Sanders 1993). His writings on affordance was mainly empirical in nature, illustrated from everyday life. Greeno (1994) notes that Gibson was conceptually very careful, rejecting any casual attempt to see this animal behaviour as related to symbolic signification. Nakayama (1994) notes Gibson's refusal to think about mental internal representations, and there is some debate about this, with Marsh et al. (2009) trying to merge them especially in the realm of social affordances.

2.2 Gibson's Confusion

"An important fact about the affordances of the environment is that they are in a sense objective, real, and physical, unlike values and meanings, which are often supposed to be subjective, phenomenal and mental. But actually an affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property, or it is both if you like. An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, and yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer." (Gibson 1979, 129)

Notice the hesitancy of Gibson's language ("... in a sense ... if you like ... cuts across ... helps us to understand its inadequacy ... both ... and yet neither,,,"). It suggests he was trying to express something that both the vocabulary and conceptual frameworks at the time found difficult. In particular, he was constrained by presuppositions about the notions of meaning and of subject-object. Gibson's use of the term 'subjective' signifies 'referring to the agent' (Michaels 2003), rather than 'mental', hence his including the word "supposed".

Costall (2012) believes that "Gibson's concept of affordances continues to give rise to a good deal of controversy and confusion. It has not helped that Gibson's presentation of the concept was itself sketchy and confused." Gibson's attempts to provide theoretical foundation were relatively weak, leaving many gaps, which led to a burgeoning debate about: affordance as events or not (Stoffregen 2000); affordance as features or properties, or situations or objects (Chemero 2003); affordance as abilities or dispositions (Stoffregen 2000; Chemero 2003; Stoffregen 2003; Scarantino 2004); affordance as enabling, inviting or constraining (Withagen & Chemero 2011); affordance as being perceived, observed or acted on unreflectively (Withagen et al. 2012; Rietveld 2008); affordance as ontological or merely epistemological; affordance as there even when no agent encounters it; affordance as referring to agent, to environment or both; affordance as compatibility between agent and environment; and so on. An historical overview can be found in Dotov et al. (2012).

There seems to be a deeper issue that need resolving, which some have located in the conventional Cartesian subject-object relationship. Affordance as a relationship between agent and environment inherently bridges between subject and object. A Gibsonian affordance is "physical and psychical". "An affordance is not bestowed upon an object by a need of the observer and his act of perceiving it," Gibson (1979, 139) says, and "is always there to be perceived", located in the environment. In that sense it is physical. And yet also affordance must be seen as "relative to the animal" (p.127). In that sense it is psychical. It is both and neither. However, the tenacious legacy of Descartes and perhaps Kant is an immense gulf between subject and object, so scholars have tended to privilege either subjective or objective in their explanations. This tendency may be seen in Alsmith's (2012) suggestion that the affordance relation is not between agent and environment, but between a bodily agent and its body, and Michaels' (2003) suggestion that affordance can be accounted for by stimulus-response compatibility.

Yet "Gibson's concept of affordances was an attempt to undermine the traditional dualism of the objective and subjective" (Costall 2012). Shaw (2003, 93) praised Gibson's courage: "where most psychologists and philosophers are happy naming the divide the subjectiveâ-objective, Gibson would rather we repair the cut entirely by a kind of relational integration". With Gibson, "one gets subjectivity and objectivity wrapped up in a single package" (Shaw 2003, 97).

Gibson's work has profound philosophical implications but they were seldom made explicit (Sanders 1993), though Gibson made references to Polanyi, James, Kant, Wittgenstein and a few others. Sanders (1993), Heft (2003), Dreyfus (2007), and Dotov et al. (2012) discuss links between Gibson, Heidegger (1962) and Merleau-Ponty (1962), for whom the agent must be understood within an environment, and everyday life is more important than laboratory situations. Both Heidegger's view that perceivedness is both subjective and objective yet neither, and Merleau-Ponty's view of perception as active, pre-rational response in a perceivable world, and the centrality of the body, lend themselves to Gibson. But they cannot take us all the way, as discussed below. Withagen et al. (2012) conclude that a full-blown account still awaits us.

2.3 Affordances of Artefacts and HCI

Gibson (1979) tried to bring natural and artificial affordances together by reason that artefacts are manufactured from natural materials, but there are important differences between them that he overlooked, especially that the affordance of artefacts does not derive primarily from physical properties, but from their design. Norman's affordances are to do with control. (Also, Gibson discussed visual affordances, while Norman also discusses aural and tactile.)

The affordance of artefacts reveals new aspects of little interest in ecological psychology, raising issues that are neither physical nor psychical in nature. Norman recognises this - but then falls into a similar reductionist trap by treating software artefacts like scroll bars in the way he treats hardware artefacts like door handles. As a result of these conflations, HCI designers tended to use the term 'affordance' too loosely. Norman (1999) tries to clarify the difference, between "real affordances" and "perceived affordance", but even in this distinction there are ambiguities, with "real affordance" ranges from physicality of touching to software constraints like limiting a screen cursor to positions where it is meaningful.

Oliver (2011) criticises Norman's view of affordance as hiding how designers communicate their intentions, not explaining how people learn to use technology, nor explaining user's 'deviant' behaviour. However, these criticisms do not invalidate Norman's view but rather define some of its limits.

Hartson (2003) tried to clarify some of Norman's concepts, introducing a User Action Framework, with four kinds of affordance, physical, cognitive, functional and sensory. Physical and sensory are close to Gibson's physical and psychical. Good design then involves a nexus of all four kinds of affordance. Hartson provides comprehensive lists of examples of issues in each of physical, cognitive and sensory affordances.

Artefact affordances are richer than Gibsonian affordances, having a normative quality (Rietveld 2008), and are 'canonical', involving not only the agent-object relation but also all the other objects and events around (Costall 2012). Artefacts are "established, widely agreed use-meanings of things", in which the agent does not primarily "find their own meanings in the object, but ... find out the intended function of the object" (p.92). Lintern (2000, 68) recognises that affordances "are nested within and overlap each other" temporally and spatially, and suggests that understanding how that is possible can assist design. Gaver (1991) has suggested affordance can be perceptible, hidden or false, with the hidden ones allowing novel uses. Thus new issues are introduced that have little meaning for ecological psychology. These issues are also encountered in socio-technical affordances.

Rambusch & Susi (2008) discuss affordances in computer gaming, specifically where an avatar wants to exit a virtual room but finds she cannot open the door. This illustrates the difference between 'real' and 'false' affordances. They argue against assigning affordance primarily to the object (as they claim Norman does), to the subject (as Cooper (1995) and Kirsch (1996) do), nor to a dualism (as Fitzgerald & Goldstein (1999) do), but want to remain faithful to Gibson's desire to bridge the subject-object divide. However, they leave another confusion, mixing together the avatar going through a door in a room with the computer-user pressing arrow keys. They discuss learning affordances, calling upon ideas like situated and embodied cognition and 'professional vision' of the expert.

At this point to be moving away from the spirit of gaming (fun) towards mere achievement of tasks. They not only conflate agent-as-interactor w th agent-as-avatar but ignore affordances of agent-as-human-being-having-fun. Likewise Detering's (2011) discussion of affordances of gaming does not address how ICT might afford fun, being mainly interested using games for professional purposes. What ICT affords for fun, however, may be of more interest to the IS field.

2.4 Socio-technical Affordances in Information Systems

Conole & Dyke (2004) discuss ten affordances of ICT as such in the realm of learning. Zammuto et al. (2007) identify five basic affordances of how ICT enables or constrains innovative ways of working in product- or service-oriented organisations. Majchrzak et al. (2013) discuss four affordances of social media for "communal knowledge conversations" in organisations, a dynamic version of knowledge sharing. Treem & Leonardi (2012) identify four affordances of the use of social media in organisations, with lists of which features of social media are most important in each affordance. Mansour et al. (2013) extend their four with another four affordances for Wikis.

Such affordances involve even more issues than artefacts do. For illustrative purpose, Table 1 gives a couple of examples of affordances discussed by each author. Column 1 is the name assigned to the affordance by each author; column 2 gives the conditions that enable each affordance; column 3 summarizes what is enabled. Columns 2 and 3 are equivalent to Gibson's physical and psychical respectively. Columns 4 and 5 show some benefits and detrimental impact that might result from the affordance. The original articles should be perused for fuller accounts.

Like artefactual affordances, socio-technical ones exhibit an intrinsic normativity, which implies the possibility of detriment as well as benefit. Awareness of normativity is mixed, but columns 4 and 5 indicate more complex normativity than in artefact use. Beneficial impact of the affordance, rather than ineffective or detrimental impact, comes from the organisational rather than ICT context. For instance, if the accessibility afforded by websites etc. is to open up information rather than generate information overload, users must learn selectivity (Conole & Dyke 2004). The attitude that prevails in the organisation seems particularly crucial, such as making the difference whether the affordance of metavoicing helps spread valuable ideas or encourages groupthink, or whether network-informed associating establishes useful links or simply exacerbates existing imbalances (Majchrzak et al. 2013).

Zammuto et al. (2007) ask how affordances emerge and change, as technology, organisation or both change. "The fact that a stone is a missile," wrote Gibson (1979, 134), "does not imply that it cannot be other things as well. It can be a paperweight, a bookend, a hammer, or a pendulum bob. It can be piled on another rock to make a cairn or a stone wall." Likewise in the IS field, users find unexpected, even innovative, uses for features of their ICT (Zammuto et al. 2007; Leonardi 2011; Oliver 2011), which yields more affordances. Affordances of social media used for socialization would be very different than when used for organisational knowledge conversations (Majchrzak et al. 2013, 47). Moreover, IS developers who implement designs sometimes encapsulate affordances in software without being aware of doing so, either by accident or because they take them for granted and their knowledge of them is tacit, and users find action possibilities that were not intended.

The affordance lens can be adapted "to reach the traditional separation between subject-object" (Majchrzak et al. 2013, 47), of which one important expression is the dialectical reactions between technological determinism, social construction of technology and social shaping of technology. Affordance might offer a fourth phase, reversing social shaping of technology to "technological shaping of sociality" (Hutchby 2001). He argues that the 'objective' reality of technological features shape human behaviour, but, he claims, without returning to technological determinism nor essentialism. Like Gibson, he wants a reconciliation. This is why Gibson's idea of "both ... and ..." is attractive - both ICT and people. Bloomfield et al. (2010) argue against Hutchby's ideas as too "essentialist", but as they seem motivated by the Cartesian legacy, they do not do justice to Gibson's basic idea.

Hutchby (2001) usefully draws attention to four emphases in Gibson that are often overlooked: affordance need not be restricted to animal psychology, affordances are both functional, in constraining and enabling certain activity, and relational, in being there even when the activity does not happen, humans must learn affordances, especially of the non-physical kind, and affordances of artefacts are designed in and do not always derive from physical features. He then illustrates these ideas in a case study.

"Where to draw the technical and social boundaries when studying affordances remains an open question" (Majchrzak et al 2013 47). Philosophical foundations are needed. Unfortunately, Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the body hinders a full appreciation of the aspects of IS facilities that do not involve the body; such as editability or persistence of information (Treem & Leonardi 2012), visualizing entire processes (Zammuto et al. 2007) or network-informed associating (Majchrzak et al. 2013). Heidegger tried to dissolve the difference between subject and object, but everyday experience declares there is a difference that cannot be dissolved, an asymmetry between agent and environment, which calls into question Latour's (1987) idea of symmetry between human and technological, though it provides a way of acknowledging the insight behind Latour's idea that technology as well as sociality are both important. Gibson's (1979, 129) insight that,

"The organism depends on the environment for its life, but the environment does not depend on the organism for its existence"

seems entirely appropriate.

2.5 The Diversity of Affordance

The diversity of kinds of affordance raises a number of related questions. How may the different kinds be identified? How do they relate to each other? Are there any other broad kinds of affordance yet to be discovered in other fields? On what basis may we identify and judge kinds of affordance that are offered as candidates? On what basis can insights emerging in one field translate across to other fields? What is their common thread with reference to which this translation might occur? For example, while the notions of subject and object, of possibility and action, might translate easily to IS, those of body scale (Alsmith 2012) and stimulus-response capability (Stins & Michaels 1997) might not.

To the user of IS several affordances occur simultaneously. Not only do users of a traditional desktop computer see three flat surfaces that Gibson might recognise (keyboard, mouse mat, and screen), but what they are doing, and the related affordances, could equally be described simultaneously in terms of "editability", "reflection", "visibility", "metavoicing", "visualizing entire work processes" (see Table 1). How do we account for simultaneity of kinds?

Such questions cannot be adequately addressed solely within the discourse of ecological psychology because that reduces most aspects to the psychical and physical, nor the discourse of HCI, which does not do justice to the different kinds of benefit and detriment that are important to IS. On the other hand, the current discourse in IS, dominated as it is by the interplay of technological determinism, social construction and social shaping of technology, cannot do justice to insights from those fields. What is needed is a 'fourth' perspective (Hutchby 2001).

2.6 The Profusion of Affordances

Gibson, the radical empiricist, did not like to classify afforcances (Withagen & Chemero 2011), but classifications have been attempted in almost all other fields. Classification of affordances can provide a reference point to ensure that important issues are not overlooked when evaluating IS use or designing better IS, can stimulate discussion and critique and can make practitioners more aware of different possibilities (Conole & Dyke 2004). Neither Treem & Leonardi (2012), Zammuto et al. (2007), nor Majchrzak et al. (2013) claim completeness for their classifications, yet Mansour et al. (2013) base their research on Treem & Leonardi. It is no surprise that Mansour et al. add four more affordances. Attempts at completeness can generate a veritable profusion of affordances (ten affordances by Conole & Dyke (2004) and over eighty by Hartson (2003)), which becomes cumbersome in practice. Was Gibson right to avoid classification?

How may practitioners overcome profusion without over-simplifying too much? This raises the question of quality, ensuring classifications or other methods are (reasonably) complete, that items do not overlap, and there are no category errors. Hartson's lists are somewhat inconsistent - for example, low-level concepts like complexity of layout and higher level ones like convincingness of content are both "cognitive". Such questions must be answered differently for each kind of affordance, artefactual, informational, organisational or managerial, etc.

A conceptual framework is needed that can can meet the challenges of diversity of kinds and profusion within each kind, in a way that is practical, and which also enables insights from other fields to be translated into IS and its complex contexts. One of the most important insights from ecological psychology is the attempt to bridge, rather than avoid, the subject-object divide.

3. AFFORDANCE AS MEANINGFULNESS

The discussions of affordance in all fields has been around action, perception, possibilities, dispositions, properties, features, relationships, etc. Yet behind all these there lurks something important to them all: meaningfulness.

This section explores the possibility of treating affordance as meaningfulness, instead of as relationship or possibility of action. Affordance as meaningfulness is not a theory to be proven 'true', but a framework for understanding, which can be demonstrated to be potentially useful and philosophically valid. Reasons why it might resonate with discussions of affordance are given from the literature, then a brief outline of one philosophical approach that can underpin it. Affordance as meaningfulness might address some of the confusions referred to above, as well as embracing and providing grounding for these issues. Possible contributions to theory and practice are discussed.

3.1 Hints at Affordance as Meaningfulness

Pressured by the atmosphere of the time, though, Gibson perhaps had to focus his attention more on behavior. Nevertheless, the chapter on the theory of affordances in Gibson (1979) starts by saying (p.127) "This is a radical hypothesis, for it implies that the 'values' and 'meanings' of things in the environment can be directly perceived." They are "relative to the animal" (his italics). Ecological psychology researches animal-meaningful issues like standing, walking and running, rather than physical issues like forces and friction. Physical properties have "unity relative to the posture and behavior of the animal being considered". Later, Gibson (1982, 407) directly says "The meaning or value of a thing consists of what it affords".

Those who developed Gibson's ideas use the term 'meaning' often. For example, "an environment consisting of affordance is a meaningful environment" (Withagen & Chemero 2011, 4), "meaning-laden environment ... Affordances are meaningful to animals" (Chemero 2003, 182). Cutting (1986, 252) remarks that Gibson "gave us affordances ... to account for meaning in the mutuality of the perceiver and environment." Costall (2012) mentions meaning many times, right from the start. In addition, many use other words that imply 'meaning', such as: "significance" (Chemero 2003, 182), "animal referential or action referential ... refer to some animal, person or group" (Michaels 2003, 139), "relative to the animal ... without respect to the animal" (Stoffregen 2000, 9). Stoffregen (2000) distinguished between affordances from mutuality relations. A mutuality relation involves one way of being meaningful ("This object is as tall as my eye" (p.10) is quantitatively meaningful), while affordances "This stair is low enough, relative to my knee, that I can climb it" (p.10, emphasis added)) involves two ways.

No wonder Schmidt (2007) call's Gibsons ideas "an ecological theory of meaning". Scarantino (2004) called the possibility of an account based on meaning "tantalizing".

However, this 'animal-relative' meaningfulness is located, not in the animal, but in the environment. This challenges not only the psychological reduction of meaning to mental activity, but also the traditional view of meaningfulness in the IS field. Discourse in IS has largely presupposed that subject impose or bestow meaning on objects, but meaningfulness is in the environment. If IS is to fully benefit from the notion of affordance, and what has made it attractive, it must face this challenge, and the deliberations in ecological psychology might help.

"An affordance points both ways" as "both physical and psychical and yet neither" (Gibson 1979, 129). This can be seen as a suggestion that animal affordance is meaningful in two ways, meaningful relative to the agent, and meaningful relative to the environment. The situation has two aspects: psychical and physical, with neither obliterating the other. Chemero (2003) argues that this coupling of non-physical with physical meaning requires a new ontology that "is at odds with today's physicalist reductionist consensus [in the field of psychology]". The theoretical challenge is how to relate two distinct kinds of meaning - they cannot so easily be related as things or actions. In the end, "Affordances ... are relations between particular aspects of animals and particular aspects of situations" (Chemero 2003, 184).

(The word 'aspect' is closely linked to ways of being meaningful. Used in architecture, an aspect of a building is a way of viewing it, and different aspects provide different experiences for the viewer; in everyday speech 'aspect' is used to denote a way of conceptually viewing an issue. From here on, the cumbersome "way of being meaningful" is usually replaced by the word "aspect".)

Affordance may therefore be defined in terms of meaningfulness as a dependency between a pair of aspects (ways of being meaningful):

• a main aspect that indicates a way in which the affordance is meaningful to agents,
• a founding aspect that indicates a way in which the affordance is meaningful to the environment that makes the main aspect possible.

(We do not say "agent aspect", because that might mislead into focus on the agent's contigent purpose in their specific situation.)

This can easily translate across to other fields. In ecological psychology the main aspect is psychical and the founding aspect, physical. In hardware artefacts, the pair is functional-physical. In the user interface, the pair is informational-psychical, in that seeing/hearing of UI objects affords information. In the case of information systems, the founding aspect is informational, and the main aspect is usually either organisational, as in Majchrzak et al. (2013), or managerial, as in Zammuto et al. (2007) (though visualization of the whole might be more analytical than managerial). Together with Hutchby (2001), these authors argue that affordance depends on a relationship between human activities and technological features, rather than on either separately, and studying either informational or organisational aspects on their own is not helpful. So, in IS too, seeing affordance as a pair of meaningful aspects is worth exploring.

Socio-technical affordances, however, can be meaningful in more than two ways. In Table 1, columns 2 and 3 contain items meaningful in the foundational and main aspects respectively. Columns 4 and 5, possible beneficial and detrimental impacts, however, can be meaningful in yet other aspects. For example, groupthink, which might be a detrimental impact of metavoicing, is meaningful in terms of what Dooyeweerd [1955] called the faith aspect (see Table 2 below).

3.2 Origins of Meaningfulness

Consciousness philosophy sees meaningfulness as subjective attribution of meaning to things, events or situations by an autonomous agent and, like the Cartesian subject-object divide, locates meaningfulness wholly in the subject. It cannot yield many insights into affordance because there meaningfulness is not just located in the agent, nor even among a group of agents, but is located in some way in the environment itself. The environment presents the affordance of walk-on-ability even though no animal walks on it. Withagen & Chemero (2011, 4) remark that "meaning is not added to the stimulus by the animal in an internal mental process; rather, it is discovered". Discovery refers, not only to theoretical isolation nor even to analytical awareness, but also to the very functioning itself that unreflectively actualizes meaningfulness. Gibson claimed that his theory "would explain the sense in which values and meanings are external to the perceiver" (Gibson 1979, 127).

The linguistic turn in philosophy sees meaningfulness as intersubjective, located in a 'lifeworld', a shared background knowledge that has been generated by 'negotiation' or social construction. Under this view, the lifeworld is the 'environment' in which meaningfulness is located. At first sight, this overcomes the problem of subjective meaningfulness, but on closer inspection it might not. Scarantino (2004) notes that an animal, an adult human and a toddler can all perceive similar affordances like fall-off-able for a cliff, so meaningfulness in affordance, while referring to the agent, cannot have been generated by agents but is somehow a property of the environment. Animals, toddlers and adult humans do not share an intersubjective lifeworld.

Affordance, "does not change as the need of the observer changes", wrote Gibson (1979, 138-9), "... the affordance, being invariant, is always there to be perceived. An affordance is not bestowed upon an object by a need of the observer and his act of perceiving it. The object offers what it does because of what it is." Not only is affordance meaningfulness not subjective, it is not intersubjective either. Thus affordances are independent of cultural and social conventions (Rambusch & Susi 2008). We might not require that all affordances are invariant across cultural changes, but there are some that cannot be accounted for by an intersubjective approach to meaningfulness. Church et al. (2010) find that there are more similarities than differences in affordances across cultures. While this is not conclusive, it poses a challenge to the intersubjective idea of meaningfulness as sufficient for affordance.

The intersubjective perspective replaces environment with shared knowledge of the environment. Whereas in IS, much of what we do depends on (shared) knowledge, the interest in affordance has arisen because some of what we do in an environment is "because of what it is", rather than on shared knowledge of it. Gibson (1979, 139) continued,

"To be sure, we define what it is in terms of ecological physics instead of physical physics, and it therefore possesses meaning and value to begin with. But this is meaning and value of a new sort."

To understand affordance most fully, without resorting to essentialism, might require us to see meaningfulness in a third way, what will be called 'oceanic'.

3.3 Meaningfulness as Ocean

Meaningfulness as ocean is somewhat akin to what we refer to in "the meaning of life" - a meaningfulness that is beyond not only the individual but also the intersubjective agreement of the community. It can, however, accommodate both subjective and intersubjective origins, if these are seen, not as creating meaning ab initio, but as 'carving out pieces' of meaningfulness that is already there and 'attaching' them to things, activity or situations.

Though affordance can be seen as pairs of meaningfulness with subjective or intersubjective origins, it will be argued below that an oceanic origin provides a more comfortable fit to what Gibson intended, and better addresses some issues in IS.

3.4 Philosophy of Meaningfulness

One philosopher who espoused and explored an 'oceanic' view was Herman Dooyeweerd. He argued that most philosophy separates meaning from reality, reducing meaningfulness to one of its aspects, and this fails to do justice to meaningfulness as such (Dooyeweerd 1955,II, 25-26). In the oceanic view, meaningfulness is not separated from reality, but is its very foundation, making all being and activity possible just as an ocean makes fish and swimming possible.

His philosophy provides a philosophical basis for the oceanic view, which is briefly as follows. Near the start of his magnum opus (Dooyeweerd 1955),

"Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood." (Dooyeweerd 1955,I,4, his italics)

(Note: Dooyeweerd used the word 'meaning', but 'meaningfulness' is preferred here to differentiate it from attribution or symbolic signification.) All being is constituted in being-meaningful. To Dooyeweerd meaning is almost a synonym for reality (Smith in Dooyeweerd 2012, 147), including all human and non-human life and existence, material, mathematical, mental or social - except for the Being of the Origin (God), to Which everything ultimately refers.

It may be argued that what Heidegger did for existence, Dooyeweerd did for meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is not something we stand apart from, control or generate (as a property of objects) but something we 'live within', and we actualize or 'discover' it by living or occurring within it. Unlike Heidegger, however, Dooyeweerd did not dissolve the difference between subject and object.

Functioning (and action, possibility, enabling, invitation, constraint) is always meaningful if meaningfulness is our ocean. Dooyeweerd argued that meaningfulness is closely linked with fundamental law. Like meaningfulness, law is diverse, some, such as the physical laws, being determinative, with other, such as social laws, being normative. All activity or agency is constituted in being subject to law - whether this is physical, psychical, artefactual, informational, social or economic activity, or any other. Objectness, to Dooyeweerd, is no mere passive being-acted-upon nor being-perceived, but is likewise a response to law, in which the object 'offers itself' to the subject to be a meaningful component of their agency. This finds echoes in Gibson's (1979, 139) statement "The object offers ...".

4. POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE IDEA THAT AFFORDANCE IS MEANINGFULNESS

4.1 Contributions of Affordance as Meaningfulness in General

As explained above, the meaningfulness approach can offer a richer understanding of affordances in IS. Though the main and foundational aspects might be the most salient ways of being meaningful, there are others. This opens up new avenues for addressing complexity in socio-technical affordances.

That users find innovative ways of using ICT features can be explained more richly with affordance as meaningfulness than with functional perspective. The functional perspective of affordance recognises innovative use as possible, but provides little help in exploring such possibilities. Affordance as meaningfulness accounts for innovative use as ways in which the feature might be meaningful to users. The expectation that meaningfulness is diverse stimulates consideration of possible innovations. Though these cannot be predicted with certainty, awareness that features have different aspects can be explored.

Meaningful implies the good rather than the neutral. This imbues the meaningfulness perspective with an innate ability to address ethical issues. Considering meaningfulness of affordances inherently encourages awareness of the possible or actual beneficial or detrimental impacts that come from its actualization. If affordance is seen as relationship or action possibility, ethical issues have to be bolted on, and are in danger of being overlooked. Full ethical analysis, however requires a clear idea of different ways in which good is meaningful.

Affordance as meaningfulness helps bridge the subject-object divide in the way Gibson and Hutchby desire. We can see both the agent's action and the environment's response to that action in terms of meaningfulness, each in two ways, a main and a founding aspect. The animal acts in ways that exhibit both physical and psychical aspects (physical as exerting force, psychical as climbing). The environment likewise 'responds' in ways that exhibit both physical and psychical aspects. Its physical response is easy to understand with Newton's law of equal and opposite reaction, but its psychical 'response' is more challenging. Since a rock cannot 'of-itself' engage in psychical (sensorimotor) agency, its psychical 'response' must be qualitatively different, as 'letting-itself-be-climbed'.

When discussing properties (or features) we have to decide whether they are of the object or subject and from which perspective to identify them, from that of the subject (e.g. climbability) or that of the object (e.g. rigidity). Gibson wants climbability to be a property of the rock, but from the perspective of the animal. Seeing affordance as relationship does not make this easy; seeing affordance as meaningfulness does.

This is deeply incompatible with the Cartesian subject-object idea, which has effected a general mindset of active agent and passive, inert object. A different mindset is required to grasp the rock's psychical 'response' intuitively, and a different philosophy is required to understand it conceptually. The intuitive grasp might be assisted by considering the case of ICT in an organisation, viewed through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (Latour 1987), a key tenet of which is the symmetry between technological artefacts and humans, both actants in a network. In meaningfulness terms, both ICT and humans may be said to exhibit two affordance aspects, informational and social. This parallels those of animal climbing the rock. Humans can act with agency in both informational and social aspects. ICT responds in the informational aspect, but 'responds' as object in the social aspect. Such a view affirms Latour's insight about human-technological symmetry but, unlike Latour, retains a distinction between them. One way of understanding this conceptually is via Dooyeweerd's (1955) radically different understanding of subject and object; this is not discussed here.

In the practice of research and of analysis, affordance as meaningfulness can help both enrich extant issues and uncover new ones. For example, Majchrzak et al.'s (2013, 39) statement that affordance is "the mutuality of actor intentions and technology capabilities ..." can be critiqued on the grounds that activity is not confined to intentions. A meaningfulness approach would suggest that unreflective engagements are just as important as intentional ones. Ahmad & Basden (2013) provide interesting suggestions on how to uncover hidden issues, by detecting the meaningfulness in the informal 'asides' that interviewees offer. In the practice of design and IS development, a continual awareness of meaningfulness to potential users can make the design of affordances more sensitive to their needs and possible unexpected discoveries.

4.2 Contributions from Identifying Kinds of Meaningfulness

Seeing affordance as meaningfulness invites us to identify distinct ways of being meaningful (aspect). This fortifies researchers against temptations to ontological reductionism. Each kind of affordance can be discussed in its own terms. Thus, for example, we find that most affordances mentioned by Treem & Leonardi (2012) are about how information is engaged with, and business issues like products and services, as discussed by Zammuto et al. (2007), would be inappropriate. We need a clear understanding of how each aspect differs from, yet relates to, others.

Dooyeweerd (1955) offers a suite of fifteen aspects, each of which is a sphere or constellation of meaningfulness. Summarised in Table 2, it might be a useful tool to IS researchers who are concerned with affordance. It gives names for each aspect, the 'kernel' of its meaningfulness, and then which affordances discussed above have it as as their main or founding aspect.

Dooyeweerd's suite is not intended to be any final truth, but only a working best-guess (Dooyeweerd 1955, II, 556), yet, it was derived from reflection on philosophical reflections over the past 3000 years, an immanent critique of this to expose deep assumptions and presuppositions, sensitive reflection on pre-theoretical experience, coupled with philosophical tests such as that of antinomy, transcendental critique of the nature of theoretical and pre-theoretical thought, coupled with penetrating self-critique. So Basden (2008) argues that it is sufficiently powerful to be able to embrace many existing formal ontologies (Hartmann 1952; Bunge 1979) and less formal classifications like Maslow's (1943) hierarchy of needs, and sufficiently well grounded in critical philosophy as to be worthy of trust.

As indicated by Table 2, the founding aspect of one affordance might be the main aspect of another, or several affordances might share the same founding aspect. This gives a basis for considering how kinds of affordance relate to each other. Each main aspect depends on the founding one for its actualization, and the founding aspect 'anticipates' the main. Dooyeweerd also recognises inter-aspect analogy, but no sound judgment can be made thereon.

The assignment of kinds of affordance to Dooyeweerdian aspects is actually more complex than is indicated by the table (for example the climbed rock involves spatial and kinematic and biotic aspects as well as physical and psychical) but these involve secondary issues that are not discussed here.

A well-conceived suite of aspects provides insights into how to translate findings in one field into others, so that the rich empirical, theoretical and philosophical discourse on affordance in the field of ecological psycyology, can be translated into the field of IS with some reliability. 'Focusing on activity rather than meaningfulness restricts such translation to either intuitive feel that there is a link, or analogical links, but focusing on meaningfulness, offers a more substantive approach. "How might the finding in field X be meaningful in our field? What is the equivalent here?" is a question to ask.

A simple example is: Chemero's (2003) argument that affordances involve not properties of objects but features of situations suggests that affordance research in IS should treat the ICT artefact less as an object and more as part of a situation.

A more complex example, which does not translate across quite so easily, is that of body scale (Warren & Whang 1987; Alsmith 2012). One approach is to ask where 'bodies' are found in IS, such as in avatars in virtual reality or characters in computer games, but this can lead to confusion, as in (Rambusch & Susi 2008) and is limited in application. Another is to seek analogies to the body, as Bloomfield et al. (2010) do, taking Scarry's (1985) view that made objects are projections of the human body (e.g. bandage replaces skin). Then "Such 'affordances', we might say, name the various ongoing exchanges of attributes between human bodies and the world made of objects" (Bloomfield et al. p.421). Even though an important suggestion, which they use in support of their main aim of countering Hutchby's (2001) supposed essentialism, they do not develop this. Useful insights might emerge from analogies, but as the "we might say" indicates, they are imprecise.

Seeing affordance as meaningfulness opens up a third way, in which we ask why body scale is important (meaningful) in ecological affordances, such as leg length and rock height. It is because of the physical properties of the animal - how the animal is meaningful in terms of the environment: the founding aspect of animal and environment are compared. In the IS field, we can likewise compare the founding aspect of agent and environment. Several affordances are founded in information (Dooyeweerd's lingual aspect), so the equivalence of body scale is: What are the lingual characteristics of the afforded human task, and how do they compare with those available in the ICT facility? One example of equivalent to body scale is language difference, which can hinder social affordance.

A well-considered set of aspects provides a basis for conceiving of, assessing and exploring new kinds of affordance not yet discussed, and thus open up new lines of research in socio-technical affordances. For example, Table 2 suggests the possibility of affordances oriented to the aesthetic aspect, which covers games and art. Though Rambusch & Susi (2008) and Detering (2011) discuss computer gaming, they fail to discuss how ICT affords aesthetically meaningful features. Discussion of Dooyeweerd's aesthetic aspect (e.g. Seerveld 2001) stimulates us to consider such things: surprise, playful challenge, scenarios of fun, ability to sharpen skills, appropriate grotesqueness, and overall harmony. Such might be afforded by founding features like models of imaginary worlds where laws differ slightly from real ones, control of difficulty, artificial intelligence, careful UI design, and so on.

An understanding of a good set of aspects like Dooyeweerd's can act as a checklist in the practice of design, analysis or research. It is not so much a checklist of affordances, but of the main and foundational aspects of each kind. The designer of a feature can ask how this feature might be meaningful in the life of the user in each aspect in turn. For example, the front-facing camera of a phone/tablet might afford recognition (analytical aspect), smarter appearahce (aesthetic aspect) or greater narcissism (ethical aspect).

4.3 Contributions from the Notion of Meaningfulness as an Ocean

It influences how the above contributions might be achieved and offers extra contributions.

The oceanic idea of meaningfulness fits some of the above ideas more comfortably than the ideas of meaningfulness as generated subjectively or intersubjectively. It gives a basis for addressing the issue of unexpected, 'hidden' (Gaver 1991) affordances in use and design, because the meaningfulness is there, waiting to be actualized, even though the designer did not intend it and the user had not been told about it, but simply discovered it. Simultaneous experience of different kinds of affordance is what would be expected under the oceanic idea, whereas under the subjective idea one has to find reasons why the meaning-generating activities are not sequentially separated in time, one leading to the next or even 'causing' it. The idea of unreflective engagement with affordances also is supported more easily, in that action is enabled, like a fish swimming, by the 'ocean' of meaningfulness, regardless of whether the agent reflects on it or not. Subjective meaningfulness tends to be assumed to be attributed consciously rather than unreflectively. Though the intersubjective lifeworld (shared background knowledge) provides a basis for unreflective action, it is not clear that it can be extended to animals, and hence the translation of insights from ecological psychology would be suspect.

It might also further "repair" the subjective-objective divide in the way Gibson sought (Shaw 2003, 93). Instead of grounding meaning-to-the-agent solely in the subject, or community of subjects, the oceanic idea opens the way to allow the environment (object) to also carry such meaning latently. The philosophical underpinning for this cannot be explored here, but Dooyeweerd (1955) provides one such, in which the object functions responsively in the aspect meaningful to the subject, forming a proximal rather than distal engagement.

Under the subjective or intersubjective presuppositions, aspects are identified by a mixture of intuition and empirical research. The latter involves extensive non-directed data gathering, followed by coding (Tesch 1990) to group together items of similar meaningfulness. But coding itself presupposes prior belief about what is meaningful to the coder, which is frequently unspoken and tacit. This is an issue that Dooyeweerd struggled with, which led him to emphasise the provisional character of his set of aspects (1955, II, 556). Th circularity of trying to identify meaningfulness while presupposing meaningfulness, can be discouraging - unless meaningfulness is seen as oceanic. Dooyeweerd saw it this way, and provided a transcendental critique of theoretical thought that suggests how it might validly be done. This is why he provides 400 pages of discussion of the aspects he delineated (1955, II, 1-426).

Cross-cultural affordances have not been widely discussed, but would be important in IS. Church et al. (2010) found that there are more similarities than differences in affordances across cultures. If affordance is meaningfulness merely attributed subjectively or intersubjectively, then this finding cannot be explained, but if meaningfulness is an ocean in which all 'swim', common to all cultures, even making cultures possible, then this finding is what would be expected. The oceanic idea of meaningfulness thus provides a basis for studying cross-cultural affordances, because it gives hope that at least some affordances are so fundamental as to be common to all or most cultures.

The profusion of affordances, so cumbersome in practical analysis or design, might be ameliorated by internalizing an understanding of oceanic kinds of meaningfulness. Without this, even seeing affordance as meaningfulness, profusion remains because the interaction of the diverse kinds can generate a plethora of different possibilities. However, if meaningfulness is internalized, with reference to our diverse ocean-enabled everyday living, distinct aspects can be detected in situ without need for prior classification. This is what Ahmad & Basden's (2013) interesting approach demonstrates.

5. CONCLUSION

It has been suggested that this can be done by thinking of affordance as meaningfulness, rather than as relationship between, agent and environment or possibility of action. Specifically, in all fields, affordance may be seen as pairs of ways of being meaningful:

• a main aspect that indicates a way in which the affordance is meaningful to agents,
• a founding aspect that indicates a way in which the affordance is meaningful to the environment that makes the main aspect possible.

Both agent and environment are exhibit both aspects, but in different ways. Other aspects can be considered in relation to these to address the complexity of socio-technical affordances.

Seeing affordance as meaningfulness affords better understanding of affordance across all fields. Putting meaningfulness at the focus of discussion of affordance, offers a way to approach the dynamic relationship between ICT and its users without recourse to either a rigid essentialism or a social construction that denies the importance of understanding the ICT itself. It can reorientate IS research and practice, away from the dichotomy between social construction and technological determinism, to a more integral perspective that recognises both the innovative responsiveness of the user of ICT and the dignity of the ICT artefact in its situation of use.

It can also guide the translation of other issues that seem specific to ecology, such as body scale, without depending solely on analogy, while also enabling new issues, which play little part in ecological psychology, to be incorporated into the idea of affordance in an integrated way rather than merely 'bolted on'. New issues discussed include diversity of kinds of affordance, coping with profusion of affordances when designing or analysing, the normativity of affordance, and context of ICT use.

Affordance as meaningfulness offers a number of contributions to theory and practice, at three levels.

• The basic idea of affordance as meaningfulness, encourages consideration of multiple simultaneous kinds of affordance and the relationship between them, provides a basis for addressing innovative use, and offers a richer view of socio-technical affordances that can cope with multiple ways of being meaningful. It provides a starting point for bridging rather than the subject-object divide as desired by Gibson (1979) and Majchrzak et al. (2013). It can contribute to the research practice by posing questions about the meaningfulness of research issues, which challenge the unspoken assumptions or hidden issues of both researchers and researched, and can make design more sensitive to user needs and possibilities.

• Using a soundly-conceived set of aspects (distinct ways of being meaningful), which range from the physical to beyond the social aspects, ameliorates tendencies to reductionism, separates out the difference socio-technical affordance of Conole & Dyke (2004), Treem & Leonardi (2012), Majchrzak et al. (2013) and Zammuto et al. (2007) and others, offers a way to explore new kinds of affordance, and provides a sound basis for translating insights from the ecological field to IS. A well-crafted, easily understood set of aspects helps clarify issues in the practice of design, evaluation and research.

• Seeing meaningfulness as 'oceanic' rather than subjective or intersubjective in origin, makes some of the above contributions more comfortable. It contributes the possibility of cross-cultural affordances, and offers a better way of engaging with the profusion of affordances across diverse contexts. This contributes to practice, because it provides a more serviceable approach to what Ahmad & Basden (2013) call 'down-to-earth' issues that actually affect the quality of IS use.

The idea of affordance as meaningfulness can stimulate several kinds of further research in IS. In philosophical discussion of affordance, it provides direction to bridging the subject-object divide, while also recognising diversity and the need for a common understanding across all fields. By providing a basis for understanding the complex normativity experienced in socio-technical affordances, and affordances that involve more than a subject-object relationship, new avenues for research are opened up. Grounding extant discussion of socio-technical affordances in their main aspects, can direct critique by revealing where different ways of being meaningful have been conflated, and can enrich by reference to underplayed aspects. New kinds of socio-technical affordance can be explored, asking how so-far-unrepresented aspects might be afforded by ICT. An outline example was given for computer gaming (Dooyeweerd's aesthetic aspect). If Dooyeweerd (1955) was correct that the faith aspect cannot be reduced to the ethical, nor the ethical to the juridical, nor this to the social and economic, this urges exploration of juridical, ethical and faith affordances too.

Though there may be other philosophies, Dooyeweerd's is one philosophy that is able to support all the above, because Dooyeweerd (1955) treated 'oceanic' meaningfulness as a serious philosophical possibility and derived a well-considered set of fifteen ways of being meaningful. Brief indications of how Dooyeweerd can be helpful have been given at various points, each of which calls for further research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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