Victor Kaptelinin

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Activity theory and HCI

• Victor Kaptelinin

2002-11-08
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Outline

• Introduction
• Two waves of HCI
• Post-cognitivist HCI Second-wave theories
• Activity theory as a middle ground
• An overview of basic principles
• The Activity Checklist
• UMEA

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Wave I The cognitive approach

• The focus on user interface
• Experimental studies of factors underlying
  efficient human-computer interaction
• Models of the user
• Usability criteria and techniques

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Wave IIFrom human factors to human actors
(Bannon, 1991)

• From product to process in research and design
• From individuals to groups
• From the laboratory to the workplace
• From novices to experts
• From analysis to design
• From user-centered to user-involved design
• From user requirements specifications to
  iterative design

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Wave III Beyond...

• Beyond work learning, play, entertainment
• Beyond adults Children as design partners
• Beyond general purpose computers Ubiquitous
  computing
• Beyond tools Persuasive technologies, etc.
• Beyond HCI web design, interaction design, etc.
• and beyond

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From UI to work to life...
understanding
informing
designing
evaluating
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What is activity theory?

• A psychological approach based on
  cultural-historical psychology
• An interdisciplinary framework
• An approach to the complex phenomena of
  purposeful use of information technologies by
  individual and groups in social context

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What activity theory is not

• Activity theory is a framework for thinking about
  activity, not a finished body of a theory
• A conceptual framework, not strongly predictive
  theory
• An analytical tool, not a cookbook for design and
  evaluation

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Why activity theory?

• The extending scope of HCI and CSCW research
• Studying context (from Situated actions to
  Contextual Design and beyond)
• Focus on user experiences
• HCI and CSCW in search of a conceptual framework

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A summary of the basic principles of activity
theory

• Object - relatedness
• Hierarchical structure of activity
• Internalization/externalization
• Mediation
• Development

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Object - relatedness

• Subject and object
• Unity of material and ideal world.
• Another example become a doctor
• transform ones own mind and body to enact
  medical skills

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Hierarchical structure of activity

• Activities and motives
• conscious and unconscious
• Actions and goals
• conscious
• Operations and conditions
• unconscious, habitual
• Poly-motivation

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Hierarchical structure of activityfor an
individual subject
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Internalization/ externalization

• Mental processes vs. external behavior
• The nature and functions of internalization
• The nature and functions of externalization
• Intra-subjectivity vs. inter-subjectivity
• Internal/external and individual/social two
  separate dimensions of human activity

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Two dimensions of human activity
individual - social
Image of the World Internal Plane of Actions
multi- voicedness
internal external
communication collaboration
instrumental activity
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Mediation

• Language and technology mediate human experience
• Accumulation and transmission of social
  experience
• Mediation of external and internal activities
• Technical tools and psychological tools
• Functional organs

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Development

• Object of study and research methodology
• Practice as a result of historical development
• Types of development and methods of their study
• Zone of Proximal Development

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The Zone of Proximal Development

• "The distance between the actual
  development level as determined by independent
  problem solving and the level of potential
  development as determined through problem solving
  under adult guidance or in collaboration with
  more capable peers"
• Lev Vygotsky

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Beyond individual activities

• Hierarchy of motives
• Collective subjects and activity systems two
  perspectives on supra-individual activities

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Engeström's model
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Basic principles of activity theory A summary

• Tools are used by active subjects (individuals,
  groups, organizations) who interact with the
  world to achieve their goals
• Subjects have hierarchies of goals which reflect,
  on the one hand, higher-level objectives and
  their tradeoffs, and, on the other hand,
  available resources
• Subjects are shaped by their activitieshaving an
  impact on their social/cultural environment,
  subjects impact themselves
• Human experience is crystallized in tools and is
  transmitted to other people by mediating their
  activities
• Human activities undergo various kinds of
  developmental transformations

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A historical overview

• 1991 "Through the interface" by Susanne Bødker
• 1992 Plenary session at the EWHCI'92 Conference
  (S. Petersburg, Russia)
• 1995 A workshop at the Third Decennial
  "Computers in Context" Conference (Aarhus,
  Denmark)
• 1996 Context and Consciousness Activity Theory
  and Human-Computer Interaction, MIT Press, ed.,
  Bonnie Nardi
• 1998 ISCRAT Conference, June 7-11, Denmark
• 2001 Special Issue Journal CSCW on activity
  theory and design, B. Nardi and D. Redmiles, eds.
• 2002 ISCRAT Conference, 18-22 June, Amsterdamaz

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AT and HCIMain directions of research

• Retrospective analyses based on activity theory
• Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
• Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
• Participatory design, scenario-based design, and
  industrial design
• Activity-based workplace studies and design
• Interface design
• Developmental work research
• Information systems

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The overall structure of the Checklist

• Part 1. Means and ends
• Part 2. The environment
• Part 3. Learning, cognition and articulation
• Part 4. Development

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Part 1. Means and ends

• Human beings have hierarchies of goals which
  emerge from attempts to meet their needs under
  current circumstances. Understanding the use of
  any technology should start with identifying the
  goals of target actions, which are relatively
  explicit, and then extending the scope of
  analysis both "up" (to higher-level actions and
  activities) and "down" (to lower level actions
  and operations).

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Part 2. The environment

• Human beings live in the social, cultural world.
  They achieve their motives and goals by active
  transformation of objects in their environments.
  This section of the checklist identifies the
  objects involved in target activities and
  constitutes the environment of the use of target
  technology.

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Part 3. Learning, cognition and articulation

• Activities include both internal (mental) and
  external components which can transform into each
  other. Computer systems should support both
  internalization of new ways of action and
  articulation of mental processes, when necessary,
  to facilitate problem solving and social
  coordination

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Part 4. Development

• Activities undergo permanent developmental
  transformations. Analysis of the history of
  target activities can help to reveal the main
  factors influencing the development. Analysis of
  potential changes in the environment can help to
  anticipate their effect on the structure of
  target activities

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Main issues in analysis

• Functionality
• Flexibility
• Learning
• Collaboration
• Personal/ Social Spaces
• Breakdowns
• User resistance
• Power differences
• etc

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Space mission as an activity the case of Apollo
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• collective activity
• pre-processed activity
• shift from one activity to another after the
  breakdown

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Suggestions

• Suggestion 1 Video monitoring of Apollo 13 from
  the inside and the outside, so that people at
  Mission Control could watch the spacecraft and
  the astronauts.
• Suggestion 2 Shared goal-specific
  representations indicating sub-goals, priorities,
  distribution of responsibilities, and available
  resources.
• Suggestion 3 Support of decision making
  (primarily by the head of Mission Control and
  those immediately responsible for the decision)
  with explicit representation of options and
  consequences associated with a specific problem.
• Suggestion 4 Support of meaningful
  interpretation of instrumentation data
• Suggestion 5 Dedicated human assistants for
  astronauts
• Suggestion 6 Systematic preliminary check of
  potential conflicts and breakdowns at each phase
  of the mission

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UMEA User-Monitoring Environment for Activities

• Applications as environments Coping with
  multiple information hierarchies
• Supporting Higher-Level User Actions Existing
  Approaches
• Personal information management systems
• Dedicated project spaces
• Non-hierarchical information space architectures
• The UMEA approach Converting interaction
  histories into project contexts

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Rationale

• minimize overhead and make the benefits of
  creating project environments apparent to the
  user
• integrate personal information management,
  communication, and management of tools and
  materials
• capitalize upon actual work practices of users.

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Architecture
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User interface Minimized overview
 
docu -ments
fol ders
resourcemenu buttons
project icons
URLs
con -tacts

maximize button

project panel
resource panel
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User interface Maximized overview
RL
CP
PL
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User interface Project view
PD
PIM/H
CP
RL
STL
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An example use scenario

• -- the user launches the UMEA application
• decides, which project to focus on
• selects a project and opens necessary resources
• continues working on the project, i.e., opens
  and saves documents, sends emails, etc
• file names, etc, are automatically added to
  respective lists of resources PIM entries are
  automatically linked to the project
• when the user switches to another project, he
  or she gets an immediate access to PIM tools and
  resources related to that project.

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Main advantages

• an access to various types of resources related
  to a project from one place,
• an overview of ongoing projects,
• a possibility to instantly switch back and forth
  between projects, and
• the help provided by the system in recalling the
  context of a project, which made it easier to
  resume working on the project after a break.

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Main problems

• the need to manually clean up resource lists
  and/or interaction histories from time to time to
  delete irrelevant items,
• some participants experienced difficulties with
  understanding the user interface and the
  functionality of the system

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Prospects for future work

• Heuristics
• Two challenges
• New directions of development

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Questions

• ???