Users, activities, practices etc.

Almost a philosophical discussion of approaches to Human-Computer Interaction ...

"For the past month or so, I've been working with a brilliant psychologist on a design project and trying to understand the privilege accorded to psychology in human-computer interaction. My colleague is perhaps the archetypal user-centred researcher and designer, and we share many common assumptions and interests. But we also come from different academic cultures and we bring fundamentally different ideas to the table.

My interest in human-computer interaction began with an interest in how humans were being defined. In broader terms, I was interested in the cultures and practices of HCI and design. Very quickly I learned that psychology and/or mental models were the dominant paradigms; Kuhn's normal science in action. So, from my perspective, activity theory is always already part of user-centred design, and vice versa. They are part of the same tree: a mental or cybernetic species. Whether modelling users or activities, the models are systemic, relatively stable, quantifiable, hierarchical, discrete, and often predictive. More importantly, they make it difficult to imagine other ways of understanding."   continued ...   (Via purse lip square jaw)