Meaning through doing:

Other conference contribution, 2007

In Gibson’s theory of perception, an organism directly perceives the value of the environment through affordances. By affordance, Gibson means the opportunities or possibilities of nature, which require the act of information pickup. Within design theory, however, there is a strong tendency towards separating perceptual information of affordances and the affordance itself. Combining theoretical discussion with an empirical case study of a medical device, we suggest there is untapped value in the notion of direct perception and argue that there is meaning through doing. Looking at the role of affordances over time, instead of a person’s first exposure to a product necessitates sensitivity toward enskilment and how people create meaning through the use of products.