- Hardcover: 414 pages
- Publisher: MIT Press (2 Jan 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0262140586
- ISBN-13: 978-0262140584
- Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 16.1 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,183,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
Product Description
Product Description
Intended for designers and researchers, Context and Consciousness brings together 13 contributions that apply activity theory to problems of human-computer interaction.Understanding how people actually use computers in their everyday lives is essential to good design and evaluation. This insight necessitates a move out of the laboratory and into the field. The research described in Context and Consciousness presents activity theory as a means of structuring and guiding field studies of human-computer interaction, from practical design to theoretical development. Activity theory is a psychological theory with a naturalistic emphasis, with roots going back to the 1920s in the Soviet Union. It provides a hierarchical framework for describing activity and a set of perspectives on practice. Activity theory has been fruitfully applied in many areas of human need, including problems of mentally and physically handicapped children, educational testing, curriculum design, and ergonomics. There is growing interest in applying activity theory to problems of human- computer interaction, and an international community of researchers is contributing to the effort.Contributors : Rachel Bellamy. Susanne Bodker. Ellen Christiansen. Yrjo Engestrom. Virginia Escalante. Dorothy Holland. Victor Kaptelinin. Kari Kuutti. Bonnie A. Nardi. Arne Raeithel. James Reeves. Boris Velichkovksy. Vladimir P. Zinchenko.
About the Author
Bonnie A. Nardi is Associate Professor in the School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of A Small Matter of Programming (1993), and coauthor of Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart (1999), both published by the MIT Press.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
What is activity theory, and how will it benefit studies of human-computer interaction? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
What is activity theory, and how will it benefit studies of human-computer interaction? Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I have found this collection to be one of the best introductions to Activity Theory. In a range of papers which gives a feel of the field it explains the key concepts and draws attention to the variety of applications of the theory. Although AT has moved on since the publication of this text, I would recommend it to anyone who is just starting to work with the theory. Use it alongside Cole's Cultural Psychology and Engestrom et al's Perspectives on Activity Theory.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I, as one new to the idea of Activity Theory, felt I didn't get as much out of this book as I should have - many issues were glossed over as if they were assumed to already be familiar to the reader. A more thorough grounding in the ideas of Activity Theory would probably have been beneficial to understand the finer details. As far as I got it, a summary of the message of the book is:
People do what they do for a purpose, and one will make a better computer system if one knows what the user's purpose is.
People do what they do for a purpose, and one will make a better computer system if one knows what the user's purpose is.
To me that seems neither controversial nor particularly different from what ethnomethodology purports to do. I found the descriptions of actual systems analyses in Part II to be the most interesting and useful material, but they were also so different in execution from one another that I was left to wonder whether there in fact is any *method* to Activity Theory, or if it is simply that idea that users have reasons that then has inspired researchers to make analyses in whatever manner they felt like.
Part III contains a long and rambling philosophy of Activity Theory in the light of the poetry of Mandelstam, extended with psychedelic diagrams. I really felt the book would have been better off without this chapter. Sadly, all the authors' diagrams tend to be more confusing than illustrative and perhaps that also speaks for the less than precise nature of the theory in that there is no well-developed notation for describing one's findings.
The book was produced in the amazingly short time of a year from idea to print, and while that speaks much for the discipline and ability of the authors, I think the publisher should have spent a bit more effort on proofreading and better-quality images.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A Must Read for Interaction Designers
10 Mar 2007
Format:Hardcover
Nardi has edited a provocative compendium of theoretical expositions and methodological examples for the application of activity theory in the design of collaborative computing systems. In many ways, this book was ahead of its time. It's importance to the emerging disciplines of interaction design and design based research should not be underestimated.
One of my favorite books.
One of my favorite books.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Its about the activity...
15 Dec 2000
Format:Hardcover
This is a mind blowing collection of papers that would interest any enthusiast of educational frameworks/theories. It clearly states the implications of activity theory to instructional design/architecture, knowledge management and all that fun stuff. The first couple of papers, by Nardi, Kuutiti and others, are particularly provocative.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Computing & Internet > Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence
- Books > Computing & Internet > Computer Science > Information Systems
- Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Online Shopping > Amazon
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Algorithms > Artificial Intelligence
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia
- Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Interface Design
- Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Psychology & Psychiatry > Specific Topics > Artificial Intelligence
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Psychology Textbooks
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
