Acting with Technology Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi Chapter - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Acting with Technology Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi Chapter - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Acting with Technology Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi Chapter 4: Interaction Design Informed by Activity Theory Presented by: Serena Hillman Discussion Topics 1. History 2. Ways activity theory has helped re-frame key HCI concepts


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Acting with Technology

Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi Chapter 4: Interaction Design Informed by Activity Theory Presented by: Serena Hillman

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Discussion Topics

  • 1. History
  • 2. Ways activity theory has helped re-frame key HCI

concepts

  • Transparency
  • Affordance
  • Direct Manipulation
  • 3. Norman ABC/Opendoc
  • 4. bodyWise Personal Trainer
  • 5. Instrumental Genesis
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HCI + Activity Theory History

  • Russia 1920s
  • In 1990s became known in HCI,

Information systems etc.

  • Mostly theoretical as a tool to analyze

design of concrete technologies

  • East-West HCI conferences solidified

its arrival

  • Most HCI relied on looking at existing

systems retrospectively to illustrate conceptual claim

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HCI + Activity Theory History

Question: Do you think activity theory could have been introduced earlier in HCI?

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Rethinking Traditional HCI Concepts

Traditionally:

  • Represents User Interface

Quality

  • Meaning is described by

what it is not

  • Allows user to do work while

the artifact remains “transparent” (metaphorically)

  • 1. Transparency
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Rethinking Traditional HCI Concepts

With Activity Theory: Good Design != Transparency

  • Individuals are aware of their actions
  • Transparency can not be built into the system or a fixed property
  • Transparency can be accomplished via skill automatization
  • Designers can only facilitate skill automatization
  • ex. by mapping user interface components
  • 1. Transparency
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Rethinking Traditional HCI Concepts

Traditionally:

  • Introduced by Shneiderman 1980s
  • Attempt to describe features of a new type of user interface emerging
  • Formulate criteria for designing successful interfaces of a new type
  • WIMP – UI
  • Act with objects in the

physical world

  • 2. Direct Manipulation
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Rethinking Traditional HCI Concepts

With Activity Theory:

  • Users seldom operate on their objects of interest, such as documents directly
  • In physical and virtual worlds users employ instruments which in turn produces

desired effect

  • UI design should differentiate between domain objects (potential objects of

interest to the user) and interaction instruments (UI components which transform user actions into commands for the domain objects)

  • Beadouin-Lafon – aim of design should be to provide an optimal integration of

domain objects and interaction instruments, rather than make interaction as direct as possible

  • 2. Direct Manipulation
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Rethinking Traditional HCI Concepts

Question: Can you think of an example of good UI based on optimal integration of domain

  • bjects and interaction instruments?
  • 2. Direct Manipulation
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Rethinking Traditional HCI Concepts

Traditionally:

  • Concept originally

introduced by Gibson within the framework of his ecological approach to visual perception

  • Introduced in HCI by

Norman – Good UI design will implement affordance that provides strong visual clues to the operation of things

  • 3. Affordance
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Rethinking Traditional HCI Concepts

  • 3. Affordance

Question:

How were the traditional concepts of affordance re-evaluated with the introduction of activity theory?

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Norman and ABC

  • Norman proposed a new approach – ABC Activity based computing
  • Concept was to make it possible to have all material needed for an activity to be

ready at hand and available with little or no mental over head

  • Turned Activity theory into a four-level hierarchy:

Activities, tasks, actions, operations

  • ABC was closely linked to OpenDoc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFJdjk2rq4E Question: Why do you think ABC failed and OpenDoc was abandoned?

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The bodyWise Personal Trainer

  • First technology to be designed using activity theory that was actually implemented

as a concrete industrial prototype

  • Motivation to workout includes the desire to appear physically and athletically

competent – resulted in fear of trying new exercise

  • Activity theory had a unique impact on the device's design not attributed to industrial

design or HCI methods

  • “Wristwatch like” device not only provided heart-rate and stopwatch features but

workout regime instructions Question: Can you think of another application or physical prototype that employees activity theory?

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Instrumental Genesis

  • Proposed by Pierre Rabardel (2000)
  • Hybrid of Activity Theory and French Ergonomics
  • Focuses on the integration of artifacts into the structure of human activities
  • Stated that appropriation of humans and artifacts does not happen all at once
  • Instrumentalization: users make changes to to artifacts and adjust them to their

specific needs Questions:

  • How does design by users relate to convention design that is designed by

designers?

  • Is web 2.0 “design-in-use” or “design-for-use”?