| Introduction to the Special Issue on Activity Theory and the Practice of Design | | BIB | 1-11 | |
| David Redmiles | |||
| A View of Software Development Environments Based on Activity Theory | | BIBAK | 13-37 | |
| P. Barthelmess; K. M. Anderson | |||
| We view software development as a collaborative activity that is typically
supported by a software development environment. Since these environments can
significantly influence the collaborative nature of a software development
project, it is important to analyze and evaluate their capabilities with
respect to collaboration. In this paper, we present an analysis and evaluation
of the collaborative capabilities of software development environments using an
activity theory perspective.
The discipline of software engineering (SE) emerged to study and develop artifacts to mediate the collective development of large software systems. While many advances have been made in the past three decades of SE's existence, the historical origins of the discipline are present in that techniques and tools to support the collaborative aspects of large-scale software development are still lacking. One factor is a common ''production-oriented'' philosophy that emphasizes the mechanistic and individualistic aspects of software development over the collaborative aspects thereby ignoring the rich set of human-human interactions that are possible over the course of a software development project. We believe that the issues and ideas surrounding activity theory may be useful in improving support for collaboration in software engineering techniques and tools. As such, we make use of the activity theory to analyze and evaluate process-centered software development environments (PCSDEs). Keywords: activity theory, software development environments, software engineering | |||
| Steps Across the Border -- Cooperation, Knowledge Production and Systems Design | | BIBAK | 39-54 | |
| Christoph Clases; Theo Wehner | |||
| The computer support of cooperation and knowledge production across socially
distributed activity systems has become an important topic in the context of
the discourse on ''knowledge management''. The present article will draw on
concepts of cultural-historical activity theory to discuss the problem of how
the notion of ''knowledge'' is conceptualized and implicitly implemented in
computer systems to support knowledge management, often neglecting the social
embeddedness of knowledge production in everyday work practices. From the point
of view of cultural-historical activity theory we would propose to look upon
the generation of knowledge as a process embedded in socially distributed
activities that are constantly being reproduced and transformed in and between
specific communities of practice. We will present a model of cooperation that
relates processual and structural aspects of joint activity. Methodologically,
it draws on the analysis of unexpected events in the course of joint activity.
Our model also proposes to use forums for co-construction to make visible
different perspectives in the process of software design. The concept of
cooperative model production is highlighted as a means to mediate, not to
eliminate, differences of perspectives involved in the course of systems
design. An empirical example will be given in which the repertory-grid
technique is used to visualize similarities and differences of potential users'
viewpoints and requirements in early stages of systems design. Keywords: activity theory, co-construction, cooperation, CSCW, difference, knowledge,
methodology, unexpected events, work psychology | |||
| Activity Theory and System Design: A View from the Trenches | | BIBAK | 55-80 | |
| Patricia Collins; Shilpa Shukla; David Redmiles | |||
| An activity theory model and a mediating artifacts hierarchy were employed
to help identify the needs for tools for customer support engineers who
documented solutions to customer problems, a knowledge authoring activity. This
activity also involves customer support engineers who assist Hewlett-Packard
software product users. The particular tools to be designed were
knowledge-authoring tools embedded in the customer support tracking application
suite, SupportTracker. The research analyzed the role of tensions between the
elements of Engestrom's activity theory model. The research also explored the
benefits of specific interpretations of Engestrom's refinement of Wartofsky's
mediating artifacts hierarchy. The hierarchy contributed to the identification
of desired characteristics of mediating artifacts, particularly tools. The
findings included an interpretation of the ''where-to'' artifact concept as
supporting an understanding of the entire activity system as an evolving
entity. Specific interventions were used to achieve a positive impact on the
evolution of the activity system. Keywords: activity theory, communities of practice, customer support organization,
field study, intervention, knowledge authoring and maintenance, mediating
means, requirements engineering, software design | |||
| Realist Activity Theory for Digital Library Evaluation: Conceptual Framework and Case Study | | BIBAK | 81-110 | |
| Mark A. Spasser | |||
| A critical yet largely unexamined facet of digital library design and use is
how library content is assembled and vetted, which in turn has profound
implications for ongoing digital library usefulness and usability. This article
presents a social realist evaluation framework for an activity theoretic case
study of the Flora of North America digital library. Social realist evaluation
is a relatively new evaluation paradigm, positing that outcomes follow from
mechanisms acting in contingently configured contexts. Because this study
focuses on the digital library content vetting process, a significant part of
the present analysis concerns the publication subsystem of the Flora of North
America digital library -- Collaborative Publishing Services -- and how
problems related to its design and use facilitates our ability to explain the
Flora of North America not only as a functioning digital library project, but
as a contradiction-driven organizational form in expansive development.
Activity theory is a philosophical and cross-disciplinary framework for
studying different forms of human practices in a multi-level, stratified
manner, developmentally in time and through space. This intensive case study of
the Flora of North America digital library illustrates that while social
realism, itself content-neutral mechanics of explanation, provides a real
foundation for activity theoretic analyses of work and technology, activity
theory supplies a conceptually and substantively rich vocabulary for
explanatory reasoning about technologically mediated social practices, such as
digital library assemblage and use. Keywords: activity theory, case study, digital libraries, evaluation, Flora of North
America, practical social analysis, realist social theory | |||
| Information Systems Development as an Activity | | BIBAK | 111-128 | |
| Mikko Korpela; Anja Mursu; H. A. Soriyan | |||
| Information systems development (ISD) is analysed in this paper as a
systemic work activity, using Activity Analysis and Development (ActAD) as the
theoretical framework. ISD is regarded here as the process by which some
collective work activity is facilitated by new information-technological means
through analysis, design, implementation, introduction and sustained support,
as well as process management. It is a temporary, boundary-crossing activity
which draws its actors, means, rules, etc. from two sides -- typically a
software company and the IS user organization. ISD is analysed as a part of a
network of activities, too, around software development and a
computer-supported use activity. A theoretical framework and a pragmatic
checklist are presented for studying ISD activities. It is argued that the
activity-theoretical framework provides a theoretically founded but detailed
and practicable procedure for studying ISD as a work activity in context. Keywords: activity network, activity theory, information systems development, research
framework | |||
| Articulating User Needs in Collaborative Design: Towards an Activity-Theoretical Approach | | BIBAK | 129-151 | |
| Reijo Miettinen; Mervi Hasu | |||
| This paper analyses the collaborative design of a high-technology product, a
neuromagnetometer used in the analysis of the activity of the human cortex. The
producer, Neuromag Company is trying to transform the device from a basic
research instrument into a means of clinical practice. This transition is
analyzed as a simultaneous evolution of the product, producer-user network and
user activities. The network is analyzed as a network of activity systems. Each
activity has a historically formed object and a motive of its own, as well as a
system of cultural means and expertise. We use these to explain and understand
the interests and points of view of the actors in relation to the product and
the contradictions of the producer-user network. It is suggested that the
emerging user needs of collective actors must be analyzed at three levels. At
the first level, the use value of the product, its capacity of solving the
vital problems and challenges of developing user activities, is characterized.
The second-level analysis concerns the creation and development of the
necessary complementary tools and services that make the implementation and use
of the product possible. This task presupposes collaboration between several
communities of the innovation network. The third level is the situated
practical use of the product. In our experience, it is advantageous that
researchers contribute with their data to a dialogue in which the user needs
are articulated. Keywords: activity theory, collaborative design, innovation network, user needs | |||
| Physical and Virtual Tools: Activity Theory Applied to the Design of Groupware | | BIBAK | 153-180 | |
| Morten Fjeld; Kristina Lauche; Martin Bichsel; Fred Voorhorst; Helmut Krueger; Matthias Rauterberg | |||
| Activity theory is based on the concept of tools mediating between subjects
and objects. In this theory, an individual's creative interaction with his or
her surroundings can result in the production of tools. When an individual's
mental processes are exteriorized in the form of tools -- termed
objectification -- they become more accessible to other people and are
therefore useful for social interaction. This paper shows how our understanding
of activity theory has shaped our design philosophy for groupware and how we
have applied it. Our design philosophy and practice is exemplified by a
description of the BUILD-IT system. This is an Augmented Reality system we
developed to enhance group work; it is a kind of graspable groupware which
supports cooperative planning. The system allows a group of people, co-located
around a table, to interact, by means of physical bricks, with models in a
virtual three-dimensional (3D) setting. Guided by task analysis, a set of
specific tools for different 3D planning and configuration tasks was
implemented as part of this system. We investigate both physical and virtual
tools. These tools allow users to adjust model height, viewpoint, and scale of
the virtual setting. Finally, our design practice is summarized in a set of
design guidelines. Based on these guidelines, we reflect on our own design
practice and the usefulness of activity theory for design. Keywords: activity theory, Augmented Reality, computer, configuration, co-located
interaction, cooperation, design, graspable, groupware, objectification,
physical tools, planning, social, Virtual Reality, virtual tools | |||
| Collaboration as an Activity Coordinating with Pseudo-Collective Objects | | BIBAK | 181-204 | |
| David Zager | |||
| A coalition is a collaborative pattern in which people must work together to
accomplish a task, but where organizational constraints stand in the way of
their making use of the coordination techniques that typically enable
collaboration. Trinity is a software system that uses a virtual world to
provide coalitions with synthetic coordination capabilities functionally
equivalent to those that occur naturally in an organized collaboration. The
virtual world functions as a pseudo-collective object since it plays the
coordination role of a collective object. The design philosophy underlying
Trinity is heavily informed by some of the fundamental concepts of Activity
Theory. To illustrate these ideas, we will examine below the case of
coordinating operational information for the coalition of people who maintain
the stream of data coursing through a securities brokerage, describing along
the way the relevant Activity Theory background and the architecture of the
virtual world. Keywords: coalitions, collective object, virtual world | |||
| NetWORKers and their Activity in Intensional Networks | | BIBAK | 205-242 | |
| Bonnie A. Nardi; Steve Whittaker; Heinrich Schwarz | |||
| Through ethnographic research, we document the rise of personal social
networks in the workplace, which we call intensional networks. Paradoxically,
we find that the most fundamental unit of analysis for computer-supported
cooperative work is not at the group level for many tasks and settings, but at
the individual level as personal social networks come to be more and more
important. Collective subjects are increasingly put together through the
assemblage of people found through personal networks rather than being
constituted as teams created through organizational planning and structuring.
Teams are still important but they are not the centerpiece of labor management
they once were, nor are they the chief resource for individual workers. We draw
attention to the importance of networks as most CSCW system designs assume a
team. We urge that designers take account of networks and the problems they
present to workers. Keywords: activity theory, collaborative work, communities of practice, social
networks | |||
| Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition: Or What Does CSCW Need to DO with Theories? | | BIBAK | 243-267 | |
| Christine A. Halverson | |||
| This essay compares activity theory (AT) with distributed cognition theory
(DCOG), asking what each can do for CSCW. It approaches this task by proposing
that theories -- when viewed as conceptual tools for making sense of a domain
-- have four important attributes: descriptive power; rhetorical power;
inferential power; and application power. It observes that AT and DCOG are not
so different: both emphasize cognition; both include the social and cultural
context of cognition; both share a commitment to ethnographically collected
data. Starting with a description of the distributed cognition approach, it
uses an example of a DCOG analysis to ground a discussion of the strengths and
weaknesses of AT and DCOG as an approach to issues in CSCW. Finally, the essay
considers what theoretical work is being done by the attributes of the
respective theories, and whether AT, DCOG, or any theory developed outside the
context of group work, will work for CSCW. Keywords: activity theory, analysis, distributed cognition, methodology | |||
| Coda and Response to Christine Halverson | | BIB | 269-275 | |
| Bonnie A. Nardi | |||
| Preface | | BIB | 3-4 | |
| Kjeld Schmidt; Christian Heath; Tom Rodden | |||
| The Problem with 'Awareness': Introductory Remarks on 'Awareness in CSCW' | | BIB | 285-298 | |
| Kjeld Schmidt | |||
| The Public Availability of Actions and Artefacts | | BIBAK | 299-316 | |
| Toni Robertson | |||
| This paper introduces and describes some concepts basic to a
phenomenological understanding of human perception that is derived from the
phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. His account of the lived experience of the
embodied subject, as the basis of both our experience in our world and our
agency in our actions within it, is consistent with the focus on designing CSCW
technology for flexible use that underlies so much of the recent work on
awareness. My aim is to approach a complex and difficult body of work from the
perspective of technology design in order to extract from it some relevant
insights and theoretical principles that may, in turn, extend our understanding
of what the public availability of actions and artefacts means in virtual space
and how it might be supported. For Merleau-Ponty perception is active, embodied
and always generative of meaning. This paper prioritises the relations between
awareness, perception and the public availability of actions and artefacts
because the challenge for designers of awareness resources for shared virtual
spaces is that if people are to be aware of anything, then it has to be
explicitly made available to their perceptions within those virtual spaces. Keywords: awareness, Merleau-Ponty, perception, phenomenology, public availability | |||
| Configuring Awareness | | BIBAK | 317-347 | |
| Christian Heath; Marcus Sanchez Svensson; Jon Hindmarsh; Paul Luff; Dirk vom Lehn | |||
| The concept of awareness has become of increasing importance to both social
and technical research in CSCW. The concept remains however relatively
unexplored, and we still have little understanding of the ways in which people
produce and sustain 'awareness' in and through social interaction with others.
In this paper, we focus on a particular aspect of awareness, the ways in which
participants design activities to have others unobtrusively notice and
discover, actions and events, which might otherwise pass unnoticed. We consider
for example how participants render visible selective aspects of their
activities, how they encourage others to notice features of the local milieu,
and how they encourage others to become sensitive to particular events. We draw
examples from different workplaces, primarily centres of coordination;
organisational environments which rest upon the participants' abilities to
delicately interweave a complex array of highly contingent, yet interdependent
activities. Keywords: awareness, centres of coordination, selective aspects | |||
| Conventions and Commitments in Distributed CSCW Groups | | BIBAK | 349-387 | |
| Gloria Mark | |||
| Conventions are necessary to establish in any recurrent cooperative
arrangement. In electronic work, they are important so as to regulate the use
of shared objects. Based on empirical results from a long-term study of a group
cooperating in electronic work, I present examples showing that the group
failed to develop normative convention behavior. These difficulties in forming
conventions can be attributed to a long list of factors: the lack of clear
precedents, different perspectives among group members, a flexible cooperation
media, limited communication, the design process, and discontinuous
cooperation. Further, I argue that commitments to the conventions were
difficult, due to the conventions not reaching an acceptance threshold, uneven
payoffs, and weak social influences. The empirical results call for a specific
set of awareness information requirements to promote active learning about the
group activity in order to support the articulation of conventions. The
requirements focus on the role of feedback as a powerful mechanism for shaping
and learning about group behavior. Keywords: articulation, awareness, conventions, empirical studies, groupware, shared
workspace | |||
| Awareness, Representation and Interpretation | | BIBAK | 389-409 | |
| Matthew Chalmers | |||
| This paper discusses how representation and interpretation affect the degree
and character of awareness afforded by computer systems: awareness of people
and of information artifacts. Our discussion ranges from system design to
theoretical concepts, and we focus on consistencies across this spectrum. We
begin by briefly describing a prototype collaborative filtering system, Recer.
This system tracks ongoing activity in the web browsers and text editors of a
group of people, and offers recommendations of URLs and local program files
that are specific to and adaptive with that activity, and that reflect patterns
of earlier activity within the community of use. We then take a more general
look at collaborative filtering, and compare it with two other approaches to
engendering awareness of useful artifacts: information retrieval and software
patterns. We discuss how each implicitly or explicitly involves collaboration,
formalisation and subjectivity in its core representations. We then explore the
artifact-centred approach to awareness that Recer represents, and relate it to
the activity-centred approach more familiar within CSCW. We use this comparison
in discussing, in more theoretical terms, how representation and formalisation
affects awareness, interpretation and use. Our intention is to explore and
understand the choices that designers have for the core representations of
information systems, and the consequences for awareness that follow for users.
We wish to relate such practical design issues to the more theoretical
discussion in CSCW around concepts such as common information spaces, the
space-place distinction, and the status of formal constructs. Keywords: awareness, collaborative filtering, formalisation, hermeneutics, information
retrieval, interpretation, path systems, representation, semiology, software
patterns, space and place | |||
| A Descriptive Framework of Workspace Awareness for Real-Time Groupware | | BIBAK | 411-446 | |
| Carl Gutwin; Saul Greenberg | |||
| Supporting awareness of others is an idea that holds promise for improving
the usability of real-time distributed groupware. However, there is little
principled information available about awareness that can be used by groupware
designers. In this article, we develop a descriptive theory of awareness for
the purpose of aiding groupware design, focusing on one kind of group awareness
called workspace awareness. We focus on how small groups perform generation and
execution tasks in medium-sized shared workspaces -- tasks where group members
frequently shift between individual and shared activities during the work
session. We have built a three-part framework that examines the concept of
workspace awareness and that helps designers understand the concept for
purposes of designing awareness support in groupware. The framework sets out
elements of knowledge that make up workspace awareness, perceptual mechanisms
used to maintain awareness, and the ways that people use workspace awareness in
collaboration. The framework also organizes previous research on awareness and
extends it to provide designers with a vocabulary and a set of ground rules for
analysing work situations, for comparing awareness devices, and for explaining
evaluation results. The basic structure of the theory can be used to describe
other kinds of awareness that are important to the usability of groupware. Keywords: awareness, groupware design, groupware usability, real-time distributed
groupware, situation awareness, shared workspaces, workspace awareness | |||
| Supporting Public Availability and Accessibility with Elvin: Experiences and Reflections | | BIBAK | 447-474 | |
| Geraldine Fitzpatrick; Simon Kaplan; Tim Mansfield; David Arnold; Bill Segall | |||
| We provide a retrospective account of how a generic event notification
service called Elvin and a suite of simple client applications: CoffeeBiff,
Tickertape and Tickerchat, came to be used within our organisation to support
awareness and interaction. After overviewing Elvin and its clients, we outline
various experiences from data collated across two studies where Elvin and its
clients have been used to augment the workaday world to support interaction, to
make digital actions visible, to make physical actions available beyond the
location of action, and to support content and socially based information
filtering. We suggest there are both functional and technical reasons for why
Elvin works for enabling awareness and interaction. Functionally, it provides a
way to produce, gather and redistribute information from everyday activities
(via Elvin) and to give that information a perceptible form (via the various
clients) that can be publicly available and accessible as a resource for
awareness. The integration of lightweight chat facilities with these
information sources enables awareness to easily flow into interaction, starting
to re-connect bodies to actions, and starting to approximate the easy flow of
interaction that happens when we are co-located. Technically, the conceptual
simplicity of the Elvin notification, the wide availability of its APIs, and
the generic functionality of its clients, especially Tickertape, have made the
use of the service appealing to developers and users for a wide range of uses. Keywords: awareness, chat tools, Elvin, event notification service, tickertape | |||
| Provocative Awareness | | BIBAK | 475-493 | |
| Bill Gaver | |||
| Recently a number of systems have been designed that connect remote lovers,
or strangers in an urban setting. The forms these systems take and the
functions they serve may be unfamiliar, but they can be seen as extensions of
awareness technologies to new domains. Awareness technologies have often been
specialised to give information for particular work activities or
relationships. Given that relationships in the home or in local communities
tend to be different from those of the workplace, it is appropriate that both
the form and content of information conveyed to increase awareness should be
different as well. The systems described here, for instance, explore new
sensory and interaction possibilities, use ambiguity to increase engagement,
and address a wider range of emotional relationships than do most workplace
awareness systems. They point to ways of extending notions of peripheral
awareness to new domains on the one hand, and possibilities for new forms of
workplace awareness on the other. Keywords: awareness, design, emotions, everyday life | |||
| Integrating Awareness in Cooperative Applications through the Reaction-Diffusion Metaphor | | BIBAK | 495-530 | |
| Carla Simone; Stefania Bandini | |||
| The paper discusses the notion of awareness from the point of view of the
design of a supportive technology. This perspective requires a deeper
understanding of the ways and means people adopt to deal with awareness
information as well as considering the integration of awareness tools with
tools supporting other forms of coordination. First, we suggest to consider two
types of awareness: by-product awareness that is generated in the course of the
activities people must do in order to accomplish their cooperative tasks; and
add-on awareness that is the outcome of an additional activity, which is a neat
cost for the cooperating actors in relation to what they must do and is
discretional in that it depends on actors' evaluation of the contingent
situation. Secondly, we propose a reaction-diffusion metaphor to describe the
awareness phenomenology and to take into account the two above-mentioned types
of awareness integration. The model of awareness derived from the metaphor
makes visible and accessible by different types of users a set of elemental
primitives whose flexible composition allows them to construct the awareness
mechanisms they dynamically need. These primitives are incorporated in a
software module that can be used in combination with coordinative applications
for sake of promoting awareness information. The main architecture of the
module is presented together with its interoperability with the target
application; moreover, a simple example illustrates how the incorporated
primitives can be used to build awareness mechanisms. Keywords: awareness modelm, cooperation, CSCW architecture, metaphors | |||