Activity theory

It accounts for environment, history of the person, culture, role of the artifact, motivations, and complexity of real-life activity.

As a result the notion of tools in AT is broad and can involve stationary, digital devices, library materials, or even physical meeting spaces.

AT recognizes the internalization and externalization of cognitive processes involved in the use of tools, as well as the transformation or development that results from the interaction.

[11] The origins of activity theory can be traced to several sources, which have subsequently given rise to various complementary and intertwined strands of development.

The first is associated with the Moscow Institute of Psychology and in particular the "troika" of young Russian researchers, Vygotsky, Leont'ev and Luria.

Leont'ev's formulation of general activity theory is currently a strong influence in post-Soviet developments in AT, which have largely been in social-scientific, organizational, and writing-studies rather than psychological research and organization.

[13][14] Finally, in the Western world, discussions and use of AT are primarily framed within the Scandinavian activity theory strand, developed by Yrjö Engeström.

In particular, the behaviour of higher primates such as chimpanzees could only be explained by the ape's formation of multi-phase plans using tools.

However, it rejects the isolated individuals as insufficient unit of analysis, analyzing the cultural and technical aspects of human actions.

The application of activity theory to information systems derives from the work of Bonnie Nardi and Kari Kuutti.

"[18] Nardi (p. 5) also argued that "activity theory proposes a strong notion of mediation—all human experience is shaped by the tools and sign systems we use.

Vygotsky described consciousness as a phenomenon that unifies attention, intention, memory, reasoning, and speech..."[18] and (p. 7) "Activity theory, with its emphasis on the importance of motive and consciousness—which belongs only to humans—sees people and things as fundamentally different.

[25] In addition, Etengoff & Daiute have conducted recent work exploring how social media interfaces can be productively used to mediate conflicts.

In the search of theoretical and methodical perspectives suited to deal with issues of flexibility and more advanced mediation between the human being, material and outcomes through the interface, it seemed promising to turn to the still rather young HCI research tradition that had emerged primarily in the US (for further discussion see Bannon & Bødker, 1991).

Specifically the cognitive science-based theories lacked means of addressing a number of issues that came out of the empirical projects (see Bannon & Bødker, 1991): 1.

[citation needed] Because of these shortcomings, it was necessary to move outside cognitive science-based HCI to find or develop the necessary theoretical platform.

European psychology had taken different paths than had American with much inspiration from dialectical materialism (Hydén 1981, Engeström, 1987).

Suchman (1987) with a similar focus introduced ethnomethodology into the discussions, and Ehn (1988) based his treatise of design of computer artifacts on Marx, Heidegger and Wittgenstein.

Bannon (1990, 1991) and Grudin (1990a and b) made significant contributions to the furthering of the approach by making it available to the HCI audience.

At the end of the 1990s, a group of Russian and American activity theorists working in the systems-cybernetic tradition of Bernshtein and Anokhin began to publish English-language articles and books dealing with topics in human factors and ergonomics[28] and, latterly, human–computer interaction.

The development of SSAT has been specifically oriented toward the analysis and design of the basic elements of human work activity: tasks, tools, methods, objects and results, and the skills, experience and abilities of involved subjects.

[30] Its design-oriented analyses specifically focus on the interrelationship between the structure and self-regulation of work activity and the configuration of its material components.

An activity is seen as a system of human "doing" whereby a subject works on an object in order to obtain a desired outcome.

In order to do this, the subject employs tools, which may be external (e.g. an axe, a computer) or internal (e.g. a plan).

Division of labour refers to the explicit and implicit organisation of the community as related to the transformation process of the object into the outcome.

For instance, a programmer in writing a program may address goals aligned towards multiple motives such as increasing his or her annual bonus, obtaining relevant career experience and contributing to organisational objectives.

For instance, Engeström's review of Nonaka's work on knowledge creation suggests enhancements based on activity theory, in particular suggesting that the organisational learning process includes preliminary stages of goal and problem formation not found in Nonaka.

Of particular importance to the study of learning in organisations is the problem of tacit knowledge, which according to Nonaka, "is highly personal and hard to formalise, making it difficult to communicate to others or to share with others.

In addition, the key idea of internalisation was originally introduced by Vygotsky as "the internal reconstruction of an external operation.

"[citation needed] Internalisation has been described by Engeström as the "key psychological mechanism" discovered by Vygotsky and is further discussed by Verenikina.