Three key affordances for serendipity. Toward a framework connecting environmental and personal factors in serendipitous encounters
| Date | 11 September 2017 |
| Pages | 1053-1081 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-07-2016-0097 |
| Published date | 11 September 2017 |
| Author | Lennart Björneborn |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Three key affordances for
serendipity
Toward a framework connecting
environmental and personal factors in
serendipitous encounters
Lennart Björneborn
Royal School of Library and Information Science,
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose –Serendipity is an interesting phenomenon to study in information science as it plays a
fundamental –but perhaps underestimated –role in how we discover, explore, and learn in all fields of life.
The purpose of this paper is to operationalize the concept of serendipity by providing terminological
“building blocks”for understanding connections bet ween environmental and personal factors in
serendipitous encounters. Understanding these connections is essential when designing affordances
in physical and digital environments that can facilitate serendipity.
Design/methodology/approach –In this paper, serendipity is defined as what happens when we, in
unplanned ways, encounter resources (information, things, people, etc.) that we find interesting. In the
outlined framework, serendipity is understood as an affordance, i.e., a usage potential when environmental
and personal factors correspond with each other. The framework introduces three key affordances for
facilitating serendipity: diversifiability, traversability, and sensoriability, covering capacities of physical and
digital environments to be diversified, traversed, and sensed. The framework is structured around couplings
between the three key affordances and three key personal serendipity factors: curiosity, mobility, and
sensitivity. Ten sub-affordances for serendipity and ten coupled personal sub-factors are also briefly outlined.
Related research is compared with and mapped into the framework aiming at a theoretical validation.
The affordance approach to serendipity is discussed, including different degrees and types of serendipity.
Findings –All the terminological “building blocks”in the framework are seen to resonate with the included
related research. Serendipity is found to be a commonplace phenomenon in everyday life. It is argued that we
cannot “engineer”nor “design”serendipity per se, but can design affordances for serendipity. Serendipity
may thus be intended by designers, but must always be unplanned by users. The outlined affordance
approach to serendipity points to the importance of our sensory-motor abilities to discover and explore
serendipitous affordances.
Research limitations/implications –Implications of the framework for designing physical and digital
environments with affordances for serendipity are briefly considered. It is suggested that physical
environments may have a primacy regarding affordances of sensoriability for facilitating serendipity, and
digital environments a primacy regarding traversability, whereas physical and digital environments may
afford similar degrees of diversifiability. In future research, the framework needs further empirical validation
in physical and digital environments.
Originality/value –No other research has been found addressing affordances for serendipity and
connections between environmental and personal factors in similarly detailed ways. The outlined framework
and typology may function as a baseline for further serendipity studies.
Keywords Design, Affordances, Serendipity, Information encountering, Information behaviour,
Individual behaviour
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
Imagine that you enter an environment providing a rich diversity of resources. It could be
any blend of resources –physical, digital, and human (i.e. people) –giving insights into the
manifold ways in which we obtain experiences and knowledge. Imagine also that this
environment allows you to traverse its terrain in different ways and make use of your senses
for discovering and exploring its resources. An environment designed like this –e.g. an
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 73 No. 5, 2017
pp. 1053-1081
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-07-2016-0097
Received 29 July 2016
Revised 12 May 2017
Accepted 15 May 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
1053
Three key
affordances for
serendipity
urban area, a library, a museum, and other settings that stimulate encounters with people,
things, information, etc. –would provide affordances for serendipity, following the
conceptual framework outlined in this paper.
Serendipity happens when we, in unplanned ways, encounter resources (information,
things, people, etc.) that we find interesting. Recent years have seen a proliferating volume
of research (e.g. reviews in McCay-Peet, 2013; Foster and Ellis, 2014; Agarwal, 2015)
suggesting that serendipity plays an integral role in how we discover, explore, and learn in
all fields of life. Serendipity is thus a fundamental –but perhaps underestimated –
phenomenon in our life and culture.
Examples include serendipity as micro-learning experiences (D’Ignazio, 2014) as well as
groundbreaking discoveries (e.g. Roberts, 1989). Serendipitous encounters can influence life
paths and careers (Bandura, 1982) as well as appear in everyday life incidents (e.g. Bogers
and Björneborn, 2013), play and creativity (e.g. André et al., 2009; Anderson, 2013), reading
for pleasure (Ross, 1999), spontaneous learning (Gopnik, 2011), jazz improvisation
(McBirnie, 2008), urban exploration (Hornecker et al., 2011), online news (Yadamsuren and
Erdelez, 2010), microblogging (Buchem, 2011), tagging museum databases (Chan, 2007),
innovation ( Johnson, 2010), entrepreneurship (Dew, 2009), co-working spaces for freelancers
(Olma, 2012), strategic communication (Knudsen and Lemmergaard, 2014), basic research
(Handelsman, 2015), interdisciplinary research (Darbellay et al., 2014), and many other fields
and references beyond the limits of this paper.
Growing awareness of this influence of serendipity on expanding our “information
horizons”(cf. Sonnenwald et al., 2001), thus counteracting limiting “filter bubbles”(Pariser,
2011), has in recent years created increased attention on how physical and digital
environments can be designed to facilitate serendipity. Examples here include (mentioning
only few selected references) workplace design ( Jeffrey and McGrath, 2000), urban design
(Zuckerman, 2011), library design (Björneborn, 2008), search engines (Rahman and Wilson,
2015), music recommendation (Taramigkou et al., 2013), and much more.
The present conceptual paper outlines a framework understanding serendipity as an
affordance (Gibson, 1977), i.e. as an “actionable propert[y] betweentheworldandanactor
(a person or animal)”(Norman, 1999, p. 39). In other words, serendipity can be seen as a
usage potential (Björneborn, 2008) through a correspondence between environmental and
personal factors. The conceptual framework aims to provide a terminology and typology
to understand what environmental and personal factors correspond with each other in
serendipitous encounters. In this context, the framework also aims to provide potential
terminological “building blocks”for design of physical and digital environments that can
facilitate serendipity. No other research has been found addressing affordances for
serendipity and connections between environmental and personal factors in similarly
detailed ways. In the paper, related research is compared with and mapped into the
outlined framework aiming at a theoretical validation. The affordance approach to
serendipity is further elaborated. The deliberately “low-scale”terms “unplanned”,
“encounter”,and“interesting”in the above definition of serendipity are discussed in more
detail. In this context, different degrees and types of serendipity are addressed,
including serendipity as a commonplace phenomenon in everyday life. Implications
of the framework for designing physical and digital environments with affordances for
serendipity are briefly considered.
2. Related research
Comparing the presented framework with related research, 11 approaches for
understanding serendipity and akin phenomena are included and mapped into the
framework (cf. Table I). Included research was selected from both often-cited and newer
literature, with theoretical as well as empirical approaches, which could supplement each
1054
JD
73,5
To continue reading
Request your trial