Georgia Institute of TechnologyLijun Ni
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discussion summary

ACTIVITY THEORY: HOLLAND & KUUTI

1) what's the difference b/w decog and AT?
  • decog is a foundation of a theory whereas AT is a framework
  • they share a common ground in that they both concern contextual setting and take activity (action) as a unit of analysis. (activity=action with meaningful context)
  • situated action also concerns action in the reard that: a) plan is not a per=configured sequence of action, but b) action is happening in a situated context.
  • Then, we discussed embodied interaction which we felt was in a similar line to the contextual interaction. Embodied interaction in Dourish's definition is any interaction that occurs in the real world that creates meaning. It doesn't have to be tangible and physical, but it needs to happen in the real world. For instance, VR cannot be an embodied interaction.

2)Context and Situation: ARE THEY SAME?
  • Situation + meaning = context (aka meaningful situation)

3) COMMON PROBLEM IN DECOG & AT
  • They both have limited setting: AT concerns work space vs. decog concerns specialized setting. Can we apply these theories in our everyday living?

4) Hutchins doesn't treat human any differently as an actor in the environment -> He rather treats people as a part of the system (as an equal being in an environment with everything else that compose)

5) AT (page 22)-> "We need to go beyond user-centered to user invovled.
  • what is user invovled? How is that different from participatory design?
  • ethnography: is this user centered or user involved?
  • what is user-invovled? Not waiting user input until the end?

6) The level of activity can be changed depending on the purpose. For instance, writing code is an activity for a programmers but at the same time, it's an action for manufacturers.




Last modified 1 November 2007 at 11:56 pm by jsung