Enacted Affordance when Doing Transdisciplinary Engineering

This study of transdisciplinary engineering draws on the concept of affordance with the purpose of bridging the across boundary interactions research and technical interactions research. Affordance, possibilities for actions, is enacted in the relationship between an engineer's experience and artefacts when transforming a perceived indeterminacy into a determinate situation. We use three examples from an ethnographic study to analyse the extent to which perceived indeterminacy influences affordance. Three types of affordances are conceptualised; shared affordance if low perceived indeterminacy, collective affordance if increasing perceived indeterminacy and pragmatic affordance if high indeterminacy. Cues from an “Interface Diagram model” artefact are sufficient to enact shared affordance, thus possibilities for actions across boundaries. Cues from a “Product Architecture model” artefact are adequate to enact collective affordance, thus possibilities for actions across boundaries. The multifarious cues from a “Quality Function Deployment matrix” artefact pave the way for pragmatic affordance, thus a common ground in terms of which possibilities for actions across boundary should be brought to the fore, supressed or even omitted.