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IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2010The photos in Figure 2 illustrate the idea of a social affordance. Once aperson is seen pointing to a map as in Fig 2a, it is clear that this person islocalizing himself/herself or indicating to someone else a specific point inthe map; on the other hand, when a person is pointing to a map with anelectronic device (Fig 2b), it is not clear what the social affordance iswhile this behavior is not part of the repertory of the community yet. Inthis specific situation, one could guess that he is taking a picture, but hecould be (actually is) using an augmented reality application on the map.Social affordance is also related to the idea of how an artifact canstimulate individual or group usage. Figure 3 is a picture of people using anaugmented reality application, which displays on the mobile overlaid information related to the printed map.Morisson et al. (2009) compared this solution based on the physical map with another application runningstrictly on the electronic device and verified that the physical solution had a great potential to group peopleand to engage a collaborative work due to the social affordance of the big printedmap.Stamper’s Social Affordance and Norman’s Social signifiers appeared atdifferent times, but both under the 2 nd paradigm influence, when culture,context, experience and life in society started to be taken into consideration byHCI.3.3 Affordance and MotivationMotivation is an important aspect of human being, when analyzing perception and action; it explains whatcauses behavior and why behavior varies in its intensity (Zhang, 2008). Considering that, Zhang (2008)suggested the term motivational affordance that comprises the properties of an object that determine whetherand how it can support one’s motivational needs. She classified some of the most important human’smotivational sources and needs to be considered in design to evoke motivational affordances: a)Psychological and social needs: autonomy and the self, which refers to the representation of self-identity;relatedness, leadership and followship, considering social and community life. b) Cognitive motives (beliefsand expectations): in respect to the user’s competence and opportunities for achievement. c) Affects andemotions, which orchestrate human reaction.The Piano Stair (Volkswagem, 2009) shown in Figure 4 is an exampleof exploring humans’ motivation to stimulate a behavior. By playingsounds like piano keys, people feel invited to create their own song, whichinvolves challenge, identity and also social interaction. These featuresattract people to choose this stair instead of the escalator most of thetimes.Involving social, cultural and personal aspects together with affect oninteraction, Zhang’s definition of affordance goes beyond the 2 ndparadigm, and may be important to address concepts related to the 3 rdparadigm.3.4 Relating Different ApproachesFigure 2a. and 2b. Social affordancein pointing to a mapFigure 3. Collaborativeuse of an AR applicationFigure 4. Motivational affordancesin the Piano stairGibson (1979) first defined affordance as a property of the relationship between the actor and the object.Gaver (1991) concurs with it, but he disconnects affordances from the perceptual information the person hasabout them. Both Norman (1988), with his concept of physical and perceived affordance, and Zhang (2008),consider affordances as properties of the object. To Stamper (2001) and Norman, with his concept of socialsignifier (2008), the social affordances are part of the culture of a society.Aiming at understanding how these different concepts may be useful in design and taking into account thecurrent HCI needs and paradigms, an observational study was conducted as described in the next section.187