Affordances: Commentary on the Special Issue of AI EDAM

The Journal "Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing" published a special issue on Affordances and asked me to comment on the collection. The concept of affordances has an interesting history, starting with the keen observations and thoughts of the perceptual psychologist, J.J. Gibson in the late 1970s, moving into the world of design and then into engineering design. As a result of this disciplinary migration, the concept of affordance leads several rather separate lives within these different fields -- ecological psychology, Design, and engineering design -- with each field barely aware of the work being done in the others. All communities make valuable contributions from their perspective of the issue. I continue to look forward to a merging of disciplines, where the insights of all fields can be brought together to form a new, harmonious whole, with many new and exciting emergent properties.