Acting with Technology Activity Theory and Interaction Design

by Kaptelinin, Victor; Nardi, Bonnie A.

• ISBN13: 9780262513319
• ISBN10: 0262513315
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-07
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Activity theory holds that the human mind is the product of our interaction with people and artifacts in the context of everyday activity. Acting with Technologymakes the case for activity theory as a basis for understanding our relationship with technology. Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi describe activity theory's principles, history, relationship to other theoretical approaches, and application to the analysis and design of technologies. The book provides the first systematic entry-level introduction to the major principles of activity theory. It describes the accumulating body of work in interaction design informed by activity theory, drawing on work from an international community of scholars and designers. Kaptelinin and Nardi examine the notion of the object of activity, describe its use in an empirical study, and discuss key debates in the development of activity theory. Finally, they outline current and future issues in activity theory, providing a comparative analysis of the theory and its leading theoretical competitors within interaction design: distributed cognition, actor-network theory, and phenomenologically inspired approaches.

Author Biography

Victor Kaptelinin is Professor in the Department of Informatics at Umeå University, Sweden, and Professor in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is coeditor of Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Designing Integrated Digital Work Environments (MIT Press, 2007).

Bonnie A. Nardi is Professor of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and Cofounder of Center for Research in Sustainability, Collapse-preparedness, and Information Technology there. She is the coauthor of Acting with Technology (MIT Press).

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
List of Tables	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Activity Theory in Interaction Design
Introduction	p. 3
Do We Need Theory in Interaction Design?	p. 15
Activity Theory in a Nutshell	p. 29
Interaction Design Informed by Activity Theory	p. 73
A Design Application of Activity Theory	p. 117
The UMEA System
Advanced Issues in Activity Theory
Objectively Speaking	p. 137
Objects of Desire	p. 153
Historical Currents in the Development of Activity Theory	p. 173
Theory in Interaction Design
Postcognitivist Theories in Interaction Design	p. 195
Artifacts, Agency, and (A)symmetry	p. 237
Looking Forward	p. 253
The Activity Checklist	p. 269
Online Resources on Activity Theory	p. 279
Notes	p. 283
References	p. 293
Index	p. 325
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