Advance Program - Tutorial

5. Activity Theory: Basic Concepts and Applications

Sunday, 08:30 - 17:00

Instructors
Victor Kaptelinin Umeå University, Sweden
Bonnie A. Nardi, AT&T; Labs-Research, USA

Benefits
You will learn basic concepts and principles of activity theory and will acquire practical skills for applying these concepts to the analysis of problems of human-computer interaction. Tutorial participants will gain a vocabulary for talking about issues of human-computer interaction and a conceptual structure for approaching field studies, evaluation work, and design.

Origins
Successfully given several times, including CHI 97 and CSCW 98. Materials updated.

Features

• Five basic principles of activity theory
• Where activity theory is situated with respect to other theories such as those of cognitive science, distributed cognition, situated action, actor-network theory as well as approaches such as task analysis and scenario-based design
• How to apply activity theory to real world problems of design and evaluation
• How to select an appropriate methodology for the problem to be studied

Audience
Researchers, designers, engineers, or managers who want to understand how computers are used in the context of real activity.

Presentation
Lecture, group discussion, and group exercise. HCI-based examples used throughout.

Instructors
Victor Kaptelinin is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Informatics, Umeå University, Sweden. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Moscow State University and has held several research and teaching positions. His current research is on contextual factors of human-computer interaction and skill automatization in computer use. Bonnie A. Nardi is an anthropologist at AT&T; Labs-Research and is currently working on social networks in the workplace. She is the editor of Context and Consciousness: Activity, Theory and Human-Computer Interaction; the author of A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing; and co-author of Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart.