A Review of the Applications of Affordance Theory in mHealth App Research

Humans’ relationships with objects are a crucial theoretical phenomenon in the visual perception field. Gibson contributed to the field by introducing Affordance Theory. His theory explains that humans do not interact with objects unless they perceive what the objects can afford or offer them. This position has created an ongoing debate leading IS researchers, among others, to apply the theory differently following two schools of thought. One school highlights the existence of IT artifact’s affordances to users’ perceptions and the IT artifact’s features merging together. The other school emphasizes that the IT artifact’s affordances are already embedded in its design and features. This review compares various applications of the theory made by the two schools, focusing on mHealth app studies. A framework including the various useful arguments is presented in order to guide researchers toward a better utilization and to help designers to improve IT artifact’s usability and usefulness