Activity theory

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• Activity theory
• For interface design
• Professor Dr. L. Uden

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• Objectives
• Discuss the principles of activity theory
• Discuss the implications of activity for CSCW
• Describe uses of AT in CSCW HCI
• Discuss activity checklist

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• Principles of activity theory
• (after Kaptelinin)
• Object-orientation
• Tool mediation
• Internalization and externalization
• Historical development
• Consciousness
• Context

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• object-orientedness
• human activity is to be understood as
  continuously developing object-oriented
  individual and collective processes or actions
  that transform the object of activity into a
  desired outcome.
• refers to the need to focus on the object of
  activity when trying to understand human
  practices, since transforming the object into
  an outcome motivates the existence of an
  activity (Kuutti, 1996).

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• The motive of human activity is reflected through
  the object or objective of that
• activity.
• object in this thesis is used in the sense of
  the objective so as to reflect and emphasise
  the purposeful nature of human activity.
• implies that human beings always have a motive
  for engaging in activity.
• Whilst participating in an activity, individuals
  tend to have various and differing motives for
  getting involved in activity.

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• Tool mediation
• It presents the view that human beings develop
  and use tools to help them achieve targeted
  objectives.
• tools are used by human to mediate their
  interactions with objects of the environment
  during activity.
• Tools therefore, have a mediating role in human
  activity.
• tools as mediators of human activity is used in
  the literature to refer to both physical and
  psychological tools

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• Historical Development
• activity develops and re-develops as a result of
  social and cultural changes that occur in the
  community where it is performed.
• As a result of this transformation, human
  activity accumulates a history of its
  development.
• It is necessary to understand the evolutionary
  aspects of human activity from a social and
  cultural point of view.
• This understanding could be accomplished
  analysing the historical development of activity
  so as to establish the reasons why activity is
  carried out in a particular way.

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• This could offer insight into the reasons for
• introducing the kind of tools being used in that
  activity.
• Understanding the historical development and use
  of tools that mediate activity demands the need
  to study activity in a particular context so as
  to understand how people use already existing
  tools within that cultural setting.

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• Internalisation and externalisation
• human mental processes develop and redevelop as a
  result of external activity during which time
  humans internalise cultural knowledge about an
  activity.
• The existence of the external and the
  internal implies that a transformation process
  occurs in the human mental perceptions of the
  activity.
• In HCI, this internalisation process is the means
  by which computer tool users form metaphors or
  internal mental representations of both the
  activity that they are engaged in, and also the
  usage patterns for the computer tool employed to
  mediate that activity.

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• the kind of knowledge absorbed during the
  internalisation process could reveal the
  historical methods of carrying out that activity.
• it could also unveil vital information as to why
  that activity takes place, including the
• development and use of tools to mediate that
  activity.
• Once this information is sorted and absorbed
  inside the individuals head, human beings then
  externalise (put outside the head) this knowledge
  by actually carrying out that activity for real
  using physical tools (e.g. a hammer).

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• These could relate to how to represent the
  individuals conceptualised world into a
• real world that can be shared collectively with
  others involved in that activity.
• Effective representation of the conceptual world
  into a real world would require the development
  and use of appropriate tools both physical and
  psychological (e.g. computer tools, mental
  models, language) to help users to collectively
  create and share the conceptual world.

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• A persons internal activity assimilates the
  experience of humanity in the form in which it
  manifests itself in the corresponding external
  activity It means that a persons mental
  processes acquire a structure necessarily linked
  to socio-historically formed means and modes,
  which are transmitted to him by other people
  through teamwork and social intercourse (Kuutti
  in Nardi, 1996, page 33, quoting from Leontev,
  1974).

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• Consciousness
• is associated with the emotional aspects and
  awareness of human intentions when studying
  activity.
• The notion of consciousness therefore reflects
  the principle unit of human mind and activity.
• Implies that human mind can only be understood
  within the context of meaningful goal oriented
  and socially determined actions.

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• Context
• reflects the situatedness or contextual aspect of
  human activity.
• Activity Theory argues that human activity is
  better understood when analysed in the context of
  the community in which it is performed.
• Activity is usually carried out not in isolation
  but in collaboration with others within the
  community.
• Even in situations whereby an individual performs
  certain activities alone, they tend to carry out
  these in a context or a situation where there are
  rules and conditions that determine the way
  activity is performed.

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• Key points from Activity Theory that are crucial
  to HCI are
• The motives of those involved in activity
• Relationships that exist amongst those involved
  in activity
• The historical development of an activity
• Implicit and explicit social practices of the
  context in which activity is carried out
• The operational structure of an activity
• Issues surrounding the development and use of
  tools to support activity.

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Activity Theory for CSCW

• Activity Theory conceptualises working as an
  active, purposive endeavour.
• Expertise is distributed within a community of
  practitioners, but activity systems achieve their
  coherency by virtue of the shared object of
  activity that unites participants.
• Neither social cooperation nor workplace
  technologies can sensibly be understood in
  isolation from the purposive nature of the
  activity system of which they are a part.

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• Expertise is situated.
• The process of knowing is related to the
  process of interpretation.
• Rather than studying technologies, communities or
  individuals in isolation from each other,
  activity theory emphasises how activities are
  intimately inter-related with the systems through
  which they are enacted.
• Collective learning occurs with engagement, and
  new mediating devices may precipitate new
  learning.

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• Unrecognised inconsistencies that develop within
  and between the elements of an activity system
  can provide major opportunities for engagement
  and dialogue.
• CSCW technologies in particular and computer
  systems in general cannot be studied in isolation
  from the core activities they are intended to
  support and that technologies themselves help
  sustain particular conceptions of activities.

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How Activity Theory is used to develop a CSCW
application

• Work activity is a basic element in analysing
  organisation.
• Allow the analysis to span from the individual to
  an organisational-wide level and even broader.
• Far more flexible than the concept of formal
  organisation.
• It is possible to study formal organisational
  units as activities - to the extent that a
  community of active subjects sharing the same
  object can be found.

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• The concept of activity makes it easy to cross
  any departmental, organisational or geographical
  borders - only belonging to the group of
  active subjects sharing an object is significant.
• The structure of the activity concepts is used to
  generate a classification of basic types of work
  support as follows

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Use of Activity Theory in CSCW

• Multilevelness
• using AT it is possible to discuss issues
  belonging to different levels within an
  integrated framework.
• Interaction in Social Context
• content and sense making in contexts has become
  implicit in research.
• AT and the concept of activity seem to be
  particularly suited to being used as a starting
  point in studying contextually embedded
  interactions.
• AT contains many features - the recognition of
  actors, mediation, historicity, constructivity,
  dynamics and others.

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• Dynamics and development
• In CSCW, little has been learned about the
  formation of new operations, sense-making and
  creation of new actions, or ultimately,
  reconfiguring. Entire activities could be
  supported by information technology.
• the reason is a lack of framework and theories
  capable of dealing with developmental and dynamic
  feature of human practices.
• AT offers a promising avenue of thought because
  the ideas of change and development are
  fundamental to it.
• the potentials for using action-operation
  dynamics.

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AT for HCI

• AT provides a model for humans in their social
  and organisational context.
• AT demands that activities are always studied in
  situ, taking into account the political,
  economic, social and cultural realities.
• Conceptual concepts in AT are collective activity
  and tool mediation.
• The holistic nature of activity provides an
  understandable focal point fir cross-disciplinary
  discussion without worrying about lower levels of
  detail where language and emphasis may differ.

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• The model of activity, comprising subject, tool,
  object and community provides a useful framework
  for identifying stakeholders in an application
  and the relationships between them.
• Activity theory hierarchy enables subjects to
  consider alternative sets of actions and
  operations to carry out the activity in a way
  that suits the specific goals and conditions of
  the situation.
• The purpose of tool mediation is much more useful
  to the study of HCI than traditional methods.The
  user interface should not be conceptualised by
  designers as independent from the activities it
  is intended to support.

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Activity Checklist

• Activity Theory provides several basic principles
  for HCI, but they are abstract when it comes to
  using them for actual design and evaluation.
• an activity checklist makes concrete the
  conceptual system of activity for the specific
  tasks of design and evaluation.

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• Is intended to elucidate the most important
  conceptual factors of CSCW design.
• Is a guide to the specific areas to which a
  designer should be paying attention when trying
  to understand the context in which a tool is, or
  will be used.
• Checklist lays out a kind of contextual design
  space by representing the key areas of context
  specified by activity theory.

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• Activity checklist is intended to be used at
  early phases of system design or for evaluating
  existing systems.
• Two types of checklist design and evaluation
  checklists.
• Covers a large space.
• Is intended to be used first by examining the
  whole space for areas of interest, then focusing
  on identifying areas of interest in as much depth
  as possible.

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• The general strategy is breadth-first
  consideration of the relevant areas of context
  enumerated in the checklist, followed by a
  drilling down into specific areas that should
  yield rich results given the tools and problems
  at hand.
• Structure of the checklist reflects the five
  basic principles of Activity Theory.
• Object-orientedness,
• hierarchical structure of activity,
• internalisation and externalisation.
• Mediation
• development.

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• Four principles on the use of target technology
  to be designed or evaluated.
• Means and ends - the extent to which the
  technology facilitates and constrains the
  achievement of users goals and the impact of the
  technology on provoking or resolving conflicts
  between different goals.
• Social and physical aspects of the environment -
  integration of target technology with
  requirements, tools, resources and social values
  of the environment.
• Learning, cognition and articulation - internal
  versus external components of activity and
  support for their mutual transformations with
  target technology.
• Development - developmental transformation of the
  foregoing components as a whole.

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Using the checklist

• Should be used in combination with other
  techniques.
• Can help identify the most relevant issues to be
  covered in the interview or to make sure
  important problems are not overlooked in a
  discussion of empirical data in an observational
  study.
• Should not imply it should be used linearly, by
  focusing on isolated items one by one,
• practitioners should look for patterns of related
  items, even if these items belong to different
  sections.

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• Must be familiar with the checklist.
• Should understand why the checklist is used.
• Can help focus on relevant items and ignore
  irrelevant ones.

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Activity Checklist