Designing Activity

An activity theoretical approach to the design of a support for planning usability studies

Erik Markensten

Masters thesis in cognitive science Department of Computer and Information Science Linkping University, Sweden

In collaboration with: Zelab, Ericsson Radio Systems, Linkping, Sweden

Spring, 1999

Abstract
This masters thesis investigates into the possibilities to redesign the activity of planning usability studies in a large telecommunications company. The aim was to increase the potential for the activity to occur and develop in a specific direction. The framework employed is based on the sociocultural approach to mind. It is argued that this better explains cognition than the traditional cognitive approach. Activity theory has been used as a research framework and its usefulness in the study has been evaluated. The approach was to identify a number of contradictions within the activity, and in relation to other activities, that hinders the development in the wanted direction. Data was collected in interviews, workshops and during observations. The analysis included a qualitative analysis using grounded theory as well as an activity theoretical analysis. Since many of the contradictions found require a cultural change it is outside the scope of this study. A temporary solution was designed as a tool that will support the creation and development of the activity in the wanted direction. The main conclusions are that the contradictions exist not within individuals minds and intentions but in organisational and cultural structures. If all contradictions would be resolved the activity of planning for usability would not exist, since it is a consequence of the contradictions within and between the activity systems. It is also pointed out that there is a need for a more precise description of how to perform an activity theoretical analysis and a new term for cognition.

Keywords: Usability planning, planning, activity theory, sociocultural, cultural-historical, mediation, cognitive science, HCI, usability.

Acknowledgements
This thesis is going to print this afternoon. Of all the feelings that rush through me at this particular moment one of the strongest is that of relief. Writing a masters thesis can, apparently, be a frustrating job and it is most certainly a relief to finally finish. Despite this, I am absolutely satisfied with the process of getting here. During these last eight months I have learned and experienced more than ever in my education and it has been both exciting and fun. Much of this is due to the supervision provided by three of the most inspiring people that I have met in my education: Henrik Artman, Martin Howard and Pr Carlshamre. It is unlikely that this thesis would be the same, had it not been for the support of my supervisors, family and friends. In particular, I have been inspired and enlightened by late discussions on Nationernas Hus, spammed and amused by the postings on [kontakt] and welcomed by the people in Zelab. To avoid leaving someone out I will not mention any names but I owe you all big thanks. Tack!

Erik Markensten Linkping, September 1999

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Contents
INTRODUCTION PROJECT BACKGROUND ASSIGNMENT AND OBJECTIVE RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND AIM THESIS OUTLINE TARGET GROUP FOR THE THESIS THEORETICAL BACKGROUND THE COGNITIVE APPROACH HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION COGNITIVE SCIENCE THE SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH MEDIATION A NEW UNIT OF ANALYSIS COGNITIVE SCIENCE FROM A SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE PROBLEMS WITH THE COGNITIVE APPROACH THE LIMITS OF DUALISM, MENTALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM THE LIMITS OF RATIONALISM THEORETICAL RESEARCH FRAMEWORK THE CONTEXTUAL APPROACHES DECIDING ON A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ACTIVITY THEORY THE ACTIVITY SYSTEM THE HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF ACTIVITY INTERNALISATION AND EXTERNALISATION DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY MEDIATION CONTRADICTIONS SUMMARY OF THEORETICAL RESEARCH FRAMEWORK THE ROLE OF ACTIVITY THEORY IN HCI CONTEXTUALISING HCI ACTIVITY THEORY AS FRAMEWORK FOR HCI THE EMPIRICAL STUDY DATA COLLECTION METHODOLOGY INTERVIEWS AND OBSERVATION Usability Special Interest Groups meetings The Delta course Project planning session FUTURE WORKSHOP THE DELPHI WORKSHOP DATA ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY VALIDITY GROUNDED THEORY ANALYSIS PROCEDURE Activity theoretical analysis 1 2 3 4 5 5 7 7 7 8 9 9 10 11 14 14 16 19 19 20 20 21 24 25 26 27 28 28 29 29 32 35 35 36 37 37 37 37 38 39 40 40 41 41

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS OF THE EMPIRICAL STUDY PLANNING FOR USABILITY MISSING OUT THE TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS PRIORITISING AMONG REQUIREMENTS SEPARATION OF USABILITY ACTIVATING VERSUS PASSIVATING CONFLICTING PERSPECTIVES Conflicts between PROPS and Delta Conflicts between SDPM and Delta REFLECTIONS ON THE PROBLEMS SUMMARY OF RESULTS DESIGNING SUPPORT FOR THE ACTIVITY THE DESIGN PROCESS DESIGN METHOD HOW TO SUPPORT THE NEW ACTIVITY Supporting the development of the activity Forces operating on the design DESIGN PROPOSALS Expert systems Information systems CONVERGING THE DESIGN Expert systems Information systems Exploring one alternative User evaluation THE FINAL DESIGN PROPOSAL THE WEB SITE THE BROCHURE DESIGNING ACTIVITY: RESULTS, DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS RESULTS DISCUSSION DESIGNING AND CREATING AN ACTIVITY FROM TECHNOLOGY TO HUMANS WHY DESIGN A TOOL? THE USE OF ACTIVITY THEORY Activity theory as a theoretical framework Activity theory in design ACCOUNTING FOR USABILITY AS QUALITY AND DESIGN WE NEED A NEW DEFINITION OF COGNITION FUTURE WORK SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS REFERENCES

42 42 44 45 46 47 49 49 51 52 53 57 57 58 58 59 59 59 60 61 62 62 63 64 65 65 66 68 71 71 73 73 74 76 77 77 78 79 79 80 80 82

Designing Activity

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

As technology becomes more and more mundane in an increasing number of areas of use the need to emphasise quality as usability gets increasingly important. Technology, new as old, is not only something for a limited number of enthusiasts but for everyone. In fact, in modern societies, it is practically impossible to avoid any use of technology if one wants to live a fairly normal life. Those of us who have accepted this technological invasion and try to adapt to it sometimes have a hard job getting by. Why should one have to hesitate how to use the newly installed automatic teller machine for the fifth time or how to reserve the book you finally found in the library? Technological artefacts come and go and they are more and more accepted in our everyday life. Mundane technologies, such as mobile telephones, microwave ovens and video recorders are already, technologically and functionally, advanced enough. When comparing products such as those many focus more on other values than functionality, such as esthetical appeal and ease of use. Although research in human-computer interaction (HCI) and usability has been going on for thirty years, producing a wealth of process models, methodologies and tools for working with usability the industry has been slow to follow. On the other hand many of those companies that have adopted the new concepts have succeeded well and practice in these companies has often been ahead of research. Unfortunately those are not many and there is still a profound lack of work to improve the quality of products by focusing on usability issues. The traditional view on technology as that of simply providing functions has been prevailing for a long time. For a long time everyone who needed a computer at home have had no choice but to furnish their nicely designed homes and offices with grey hulks. Although designed computers have appeared before it was not until the introduction of the Apple Imac in 1998 that the traditional grey hulk was seriously challenged with an alternative. Nobody complained about or questioned the hulk designs, however, because this is the way it is had always been. Technology has only been for enhancing productivity and efficiency, and to make available more functionality. Due to the many difficulties involved in introducing usability in a company there is a body of research on the issue. Often the introduction of usability is done from within the company, driven by a small group of individuals. The difficulties arise when the two cultures of usability and technocentrism meet and need to converge. In large companies there are often well established process models, methods and routines for how to manage work. Equally often these models, stemming from an

Introduction

engineering culture, are not compatible with how usability work is structured. The consequences are difficulties in working with usability in these companies. Since there are already established methods and routines, usability, once introduced, is often seen as an add-on to the development process. There are usability teams and usability activities, which are not the same as the development teams and the design activities. The exact role of usability in the organisation is often vague and unclear and this is apparent in the projects. Often even planned usability efforts are rarely explicitly included in the overall project plan (Mayhew, 1999). More often, however, usability studies are not planned at all. When searching the available research for publications on the issue of planning usability studies in development projects the result is almost nil. There is practically nothing written on the issue. Instead, you find writings about how to plan and prepare usability tests, lots of it. There is equally little written about the whole usability process, from planning to final test. One of the firsts to grasp the whole picture, including the planing activity, was Mayhew (1999) in her book on the usability engineering process. The wealth of methods available for working structurally with usability can of course, implicitly, be regarded as a way of planning usability studies. The point here is that planning in this case is implicit, a side effect of using the method to structure work. The thoroughfare of the usability engineering process by Mayhew is the only book I have found that explicitly deal with the planning process. Even she, however, does not include the planning process as a natural step in the usability engineering process, as the first step in conducting a usability study. This study will investigate into the activity of planning usability studies. The theoretical framework that will be used is that provided by activity theory. On a more general level the use of activity theory as a framework and tool will be evaluated. The activity theoretical perspective is adopted to contextualise the unit of analysis. The concept of the activity, as it is mentioned here, in the research question and throughout the report, is that of a unit of analysis rather than any activity as in normal language use. This will be explained more in detail in chapter three but it is mentioned for the reader to be attentive to this interpretation of the term.

Project background
This thesis is based on a study that was conducted during the spring and summer of 1999 in co-operation with the Systems Engineering Lab (hereafter Zelab) within Research and Innovation at Ericsson Radio Systems, a major developer of products for managing mobile radio communication. Ericsson was established in 1876. Today it is one of the largest companies in the world offering advanced communications solutions for mobile and fixed networks, as well as consumer products such as telephones. Although Ericsson as a whole is immensely large with over 100000 employees, representation in 140 countries and a number of departments in a largely hierarchical organisation, this thesis only reports from one department in Linkping, Sweden. The business idea of the department in Linkping is to develop software applications for mobile radio telecommunication. This is not, as it may seem, applications for mobile telephones, but systems for managing, administering and supervising mobile telephone networks. These systems are gigantic compared to an ordinary office application. The development teams are equally large, ranging up to

Designing Activity

several hundred people, and the development time is about five years for the largest products. The customers are for the most part mobile telecom operators. Ericsson is in general a typically technique-driven business. This is not strange since much of the operations of the company are concerned with hardware such as telephones, network components and the like. In the applications area there has, however, been an ongoing work for changing this technique-driven view on product development by introducing usability in the organisation. This started with the introduction of a tailored usability engineering method, the Delta Method, in 1992. The Delta project was formed as a joint effort between Ericsson Infocom Consultants AB and the University of Linkping. The aim of Ericsson Infocom was to extend their software development methods to address usability and, in particular, to put the competence of the technical communicators to better use in the design process. The outcome of the project was a commercially available handbook in usability engineering that includes the competence of the technical communicator (see Carlshamre, 1994; Rantzer, 1996 for a more thorough report of the procedure of introducing usability in Ericsson). As Ericsson Infocom Consultants was merged into Ericsson the employees of Infocom, who by then were used to the new approach, were scattered in different departments. One of the key persons behind the work of the Delta method started to work in Zelab with usability matters in 1996. Since practically no one had heard about usability before Zelab soon became the main actor concerning usability in Ericsson in Linkping. Although there were many successful measurements taken to introduce usability in the organisation the progress was slow. Zelab had noticed how many people had had a difficult time planning for usability, even though they had an understanding of usability work. People with experience of planning activities in projects were asked to plan a usability study, which they knew about in theory, but had never worked with in practice. Often this resulted in unrealistic plans or an abandoning of the whole usability part of the project. This was considered a problem since a good plan for the work to be done is very important in project work. On the one hand planning allows one to more effectively manage ones own work efforts. On the other hand, getting the usability project plan included in the overall project plan increases the likelihood that it will actually be executed. The latter is important when it comes to usability matters since usability resources are often the first to get cut down. Since many of those involved in usability work were unsure of how to make usability plans they often turned to the experts in Zelab for help. Apart from taking resources from Zelabs main objective, to research, this constituted a bottleneck in the expansion of usability in the organisation. If someone at Zelab had got to review or help with every second usability plan made this would surely hinder spreading the usability perspective, at the same time as people would not learn themselves to make a proper usability plan.

Assignment and objective

A decision was made to approach the planning problem presented above by developing a supporting tool for usability planning that would help people to easier conduct usability plans. The problem of how this support could be designed and implemented was set up as a thesis assignment. This design problem is included

Introduction

into the main objective of this thesis; how the usability planning activity can be supported.

Research questions and aim

I discuss two major issues in this thesis. The first issue is directly related to the objective presented above and is covered by the first three research questions:
1. 2.

Why is it that the activity of planning usability studies is perceived as difficult? How can the creation and development of this activity be supported by the introduction of a new tool, and how could this tool be designed?

The study aims at extending the focus beyond the user and the (lack of) tools supporting the activity. The focus will be on the activity of planning usability studies and the problems connected to this. By focusing on the activity of planning, rather than on the possibilities of a new supporting tool a number of questions arise. What is the structure of the activity and how does it differ between individuals? Are there any inherent contradictions in the activity? If so, what do they originate in and how can they be eliminated? Which resources are available to the individual in the activity of planning for usability in terms of available tools, social relations, possibilities set up by the present rules and the individuals role in the organisation? In stating my first research question I intend to ask a more fundamental question than how we can make people plan for usability, namely, why this is needed. People within Zelab claim in fact that planning usability studies is actually not a complicated task. The assumption is that people find it difficult to plan for usability, because of the difficulties involved in shifting from an engineering perspective to a usability perspective on system development, just because it involves another perspective. By giving these people some practical help with a supporting tool the step would not seem as large. While I believe this is correct I want to take the issue yet another step and examine the factors that make this shift in perspective so difficult. The underlying assumption behind stretching the focus this wide is that there might be other more deeply-rooted reasons to why people find it hard to plan for usability. In approaching the above questions I will employ a theoretical framework grounded in activity theory. The activity theory has in recent years been suggested as a theoretical framework for HCI (e.g. Nardi, 1996). While many articles report using the activity theory, in my opinion, very few actually employ its full capacity as a tool and framework for HCI and design. This thesis is also an attempt to actually use the activity theory, not only as a post-hoc framework, but also as a describing, analysing and interpreting framework for the study. This is the second major issue in the thesis, to explore the usefulness of activity theory not only as an overreaching framework, but also as a practical tool in design. I believe that using the activity theory will help extending the object of study and find designs and solutions that support real problems, are well integrated with the current work, and which had maybe not been thought of, had I not extended the object of study. The use of activity theory as a framework and tool is covered by the third research question:
3.

What practical and methodological support does the activity theory provide when doing HCI studies?

Designing Activity

The focus is thus on the activity of planning for usability. Although the assignment is to find a supporting tool the focus will be set wide enough to search for other solutions as well and to uncover eventual dimensions of the problem that cannot be resolved by simply introducing a new tool. These solutions could, for example, constitute modifications of organisational rules and structures.

Thesis outline
The research approach can be characterised as proceeding through three phases. First theoretical studies were conducted to gain an understanding of the activity theory and its role in HCI, and how and why one should plan usability studies. The latter turned out to be very difficult to find anything about since practically nothing is written on the subject. Secondly, an empirical study was conducted. The aim was to collect data material to be able to model the present and future activities of planning for usability, and to gain an understanding of their characteristics. A qualitative approach was taken as it was judged that this would better suit the nature of the research problem, an understanding of organisational and social practice, than a quantitative approach. As the exact scope of the study was not known in advance it can be said to be explorative in nature. Although I intended to cover enough issues to be able to answer the research question stipulated above, I was aware of that the time and resources available were scarce and that it might well be that I would not get a fully coherent and representative picture of the work and practices under study. Finally a design was made for the prototypical tool that would support the activity of planning for usability. This was based on the results of the empirical study together with the theoretical research.

Target group for the thesis

This is a masters thesis in cognitive science at Linkping University. The thesis work should correspond to twenty weeks of full-time studies. The content is foremost aimed at the people within Zelab who set up the assignment, students of cognitive science or people with similar background. Of course, it may also interest people with other backgrounds who want to learn more about the issues covered in this thesis.

Introduction

Designing Activity

Chapter 2
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter goes through the theoretical development of human-computer interaction and cognitive science as research disciplines within the cognitive approach. The aim is to present the theoretical concepts of this approach, particularly within the field of HCI, in order to suggest an alternative approach in the next chapter. The alternative approach is introduced in this chapter under the heading The sociocultural approach.

The cognitive approach

I employ the label the cognitive approach to refer to the approach taken within HCI and cognitive science to study and interpret human functioning. The cognitive approach has dominated western psychology for the past 40 years and has focused mainly on human cognitive processes. It started with the paradigm shift between behaviourism and cognitive psychology, in which both cognitive science and human-computer interaction have got their roots.

Human-computer interaction

HCI has its roots in general theory and software psychology, a discipline with solid basis in experimental psychology. The intention was from the beginning to accumulate empirical knowledge by controlled experiments. The scientific methodology would ensure that the knowledge was (statistically) true and applicable to other instances of HCI. The notion of usability was to arrange the interface to fit the human as well as possible. This notion of usability continued to exist in subsequent work on cognitive engineering, human factors and ergonomics (Ehn & Lwgren, 1997). As the name indicates, the human factors approach aimed at fitting machines to the skills of humans, both physical and mental. Bridging from Taylorism the focus was still on the machine and its possibilities. The human was factored in into the whole equation of how to increase productivity and efficiency (Bannon, 1991). As computing developed a separation between operating and programming developed, but the focus was still on the functionality of the software rather than on its ease of use. Applications were developed by programmers for programmers, who could handle complex interfaces without problem. As the personal computer started to get widespread, and the use of software extended beyond the developing and technical community, a demand of more usable systems was noticed. The field of

Theoretical background

human-computer interaction emerged in the early eighties as a response to these changing conditions. Researchers within cognitive science, which was an established discipline at this time, argued for a better cognitive coupling between the human and the computer, claiming that the human factors approach lacked in theoretical motivation. Research was conducted on human computer dialogues, information presentation and visualisation etc. This demanded a new approach, which was further fuelled by the limited impact that general theory and its followers had had on professional software development. The new perspective that emerged was grounded in classical engineering, it drew upon the methodological foundations of general theory but oriented itself towards a paradigmatic model of applied science and engineering. It was named usability engineering.
Usability engineering () amounts to specifying, quantitatively and in advance, what characteristics and in what amounts the final product to be engineered is to have. This process is followed by actually building the product and demonstrating that it does indeed have the planned-for characteristics. Ehn & Lwgren, 1997, p. 301

Thus it is crucial to be able to set up measurable usability goals. Without such goals it is not possible to measure and verify if you have reached the designated quality level. Measurable goals also address the problem of when to stop iterating. Examples of measurable aspects of usability include user performance on specified tasks, flexibility of the design, learnability and subjective preference or degree of satisfaction. One surprising trait of traditional usability engineering is that the usability of a system is divorced from its utility. It is as if usability engineering is primarily concerned with the users efficient and error-free access to the services of the system, but not with the appropriateness of the services (Lwgren, 1995; Ehn & Lwgren, 1997). I will stop my review of human-computer interaction here, well aware of that it is incomplete. Usability engineering, for example, is today far from that I have described above. Many other interesting sub disciplines of HCI, such as contextual design and interaction design, have emerged during the last decade and the concept of usability has matured. For a review of the development of the usability concept see Ehn & Lwgren (1997). For a review of the development of HCI and the different directions and disciplines within see Lwgren (1995) and Preece (1994).

Much of contemporary thinking about the mind derives from Ren Descartes' distinction between the body and the soul and the roots of cognitive science go as far back as those of philosophy. Among philosophers, as well as among psychologist at the turn of the century, the favourite method of gaining insights into the nature of the mind was introspection. The inherent subjectivity of introspection led to severe methodological problems that led to the behaviourist revolution in the beginning of the 19th century. According to the behaviourist tradition, scientific reasoning should be founded on observational data that should be obtained from experiments. From these data knowledge could only be expanded by using logically valid inferences. As described by Gardner (1985), in 1936 Alan Turing proposed a hypothetical machine, later to be named the Turing Machine, which essentially formed the basis of the computer. This machine was in principle able to execute any given function and hence, in line with Churchs proof that everything that can be computed can be computed with recursive functions, compute everything that was computable.

Cognitive science

Designing Activity

Turings reasoning was further developed by Newell and Simon in their definition of the physical symbol system hypothesis (PSSH). According to this, a physical symbol system is necessary and sufficient to carry out intelligent actions. Such a system consists of a control, a memory, a set of operations and input and output. The job of such a system should be to manipulate formal symbols and, by concatenation, produce other symbols. The physical symbol system was adopted as the general architecture of cognition. Turing further suggested that one could program a Turing machine so that it would be impossible to distinguish its answers to an interlocutor from those contrived by a living human being (Gardner, 1985). This was called the Turing test. When the first machines appeared the exiting question of can it actually think and to what extent does it think like a human arose. McCulloch and Pitts interpretations of the firings of the neurones in the brain as sequences of zeros and ones, in analogy with the binary digits of the computers further fuelled the interest. The most important metaphor of cognitive science, the brain as a huge computer, was born. All these events, together with many others in psychology, neurology and linguistics marked the birth of cognitive science in 1956. Cognitive science is a multidisciplinary research tradition including in particular the disciplines philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, anthropology and neuroscience. Gardner (1985) define cognitive science as:
a contemporary, empirically based effort to answer long standing epistemological questions particularly those concerned with the nature of knowledge, its components, its sources, its development, and its deployment. Gardner, 1985, p. 6

Cognitive science, as described by Gardner (1985) has two central beliefs. First, when speaking about human cognitive activities, it is necessary to speak about mental representations and to posit a level of analysis wholly separate from the biological and the neurological, on the one hand, and the sociological or cultural on the other. Secondly, the computer serves as the most viable model of how the human mind functions. Thus, cognitive science explicitly decided to leave out affect, context, culture and history as influences and dimensions of human cognition in the belief that these could be added on later on. The reasoning went that if one included these phenomena as well it would make the task to difficult and, in an effort to explain everything, one ends up explaining nothing.

The sociocultural approach

Although the sociocultural approach to mind is an aspirant within cognitive science it differs in many respects from the cognitive approach. The goal of the sociocultural approach is to explicate the relationship between individual mental functioning and the physical, cultural, historical and institutional situations in which this functioning occurs. It is a reaction to the disciplinary fragmentation in the social sciences where different disciplines focus on different and often incommensurable aspects of human functioning.

Mediation

The most fundamental concept in the sociocultural approach is that of mediation, This concept is most explored by Wertsch (1998) in his book Mediated Action. Imagine a man screwing a screw with a screwdriver. Who is doing the action, the

Theoretical background

10

man or the screwdriver? It is a ridiculous question to ask but it does emphasis the central theme in mediated action. Obviously the man is not doing the job himself but neither does the screwdriver magically perform it without intervention. The movement of the hand means nothing without the screwdriver. The mans action is to screw the screw. The screwdriver mediates this action, or, put in another way, the screwdriver is the mediational means by which the man carries out the action. The cognition is bound to the activity, the tools and the action. The important thing to grasp here is that there exists an irreducible tension between the agent and the mediational means. Studies of either the agent or the mediational means are interesting and relevant only when they contribute to the understanding of how the elements combine to produce the mediated action under consideration. Wertsch (1998) gives another example of mediated action, this time involving an internal tool. Say that you were asked to multiply 343 by 822. You could probably come up with the answer 281946. If asked how you arrived at this conclusion you would probably reply I simply multiplied 343 by 822., maybe showing a calculation as in Figure 1. If you, in a second try had not been allowed to use any tools (such as paper, pencil or calculator) you would probably not have made it. Returning to the issue of mediation, was it really you who performed the action in the firsts case? After all you said I just multiplied. If it was only you who did it, why then did you have such difficulties in the second case? The answer is, again, that specific mediational means was involved that mediated the action of calculation. The spatial organisation or syntax of the numbers is an essential part of a cultural tool without which we have problems solving this problem. A major point here is that the tool is, in some sense, doing some of the thinking involved. This argumentation is applicable to the first example with the screwdriver as well, although, in that case, it is an external action that is distributed between the tool and the agent, rather than an internal. Hence, it is Figure 1: A calculation important to be aware of the need to set the whole functional system as the unit of analysis, in order to focus on mediated action and not just individuals and artefacts in isolation. The term functional system refers to the system set up by people and their mediating artefacts. This is not easy, according to Wertsch, since it is embedded in our culture:
when asking about someones ability level, we are usually asking about his or her skills in operating a particular cultural tool. It is crucial to address this question since agents may demonstrate outstanding skills when operating with one cultural tool, but only average skills when operating with others. This point is easy to overlook because the cultural tool to be employed in any particular assessment is usually a fixed and unquestioned part of the particular sociocultural context. Wertsch, 1991, p. 57

A new unit of analysis

While cognitive science has approached individual processes in order to understand sociocultural phenomena other disciplines have begun with an account of societal phenomena and then, from this, generated accounts of individual, mental functioning. According to Wertsch (1998) this academic dispute over whether to

Designing Activity

11

give psychological or cultural or sociological processes analytic primacy reflects an endless and fruitless antimony between society and individual that is not rationally resolvable. He believes that the tendency to formulate the issues in either/or alternatives is counterproductive and misleading and has its root in how the opposing terms are understood. To avoid confusion Wertsch suggests that it is necessary to live in the middle of different analytic perspectives, i.e. to link, but not reduce, different perspectives to each other. A way to do this is to take human action and, more specifically, mediated action as the unit of analysis:
action is not carried out either by the individual or by society, although there are individual and societal moments to any action. For related reasons an account of action cannot be derived from the study of mental functioning or sociocultural setting in isolation. Instead, action provides a context within which the individual and society (as well as mental functioning and sociocultural context) are understood as interrelated moments. Wertsch, 1998, p. 34

Action can be internal (e.g. thinking) or external (e.g. doing), and it may be carried out by individuals or groups. The fact that the concept of action is not inherently tied solely to individual or social processes means that it is not limited by the society/individual dichotomy. According to Wertsch, much of the contemporary research in human sciences in general, and in psychology in particular, is too narrowly focused on the individual in isolation which is a severely limited stance. An important way to avoid this individualistic reductionism, he argues, is to recognise the essential role played by the mediational means or cultural tools in shaping human action. Mediated action provides a kind of natural link between action, including mental action, on the one hand, and the cultural, institutional and historical contexts in which such action occurs, on the other.(Wertsch 1998) One of the results of accepting this new middle perspective is that the boundaries between agent and action begin to erode. Instead of assuming that an agent, considered in isolation, is responsible for action, the appropriate designation may be something like individual-operating-with-mediational-means.

Cognitive science from a sociocultural perspective

In this section I summarise and comment on the last chapter of Hutchins (1995) pioneering book Cognition in the wild in which he introduces a sociocultural approach to cognitive science. Unless otherwise stated the rest of this passage refers to that chapter. Hutchins, taking a sociocultural stance, describes the development of cognitive science and the possible reasons that made it separate mental activity from action, history and culture. He starts off citing Dennett about the context of Alan Turings discoveries: What do I do, he must have asked himself, when I perform a computation? Well, first I ask myself which rule applies, and then I apply the rule, and then I write down the result, and then I look at the result, and then I ask myself what to do next, and. Hence, originally the model cognitive system (Turing doing computation) was a person actually doing the manipulation of the symbols with his hands and eyes. He was visually and manually interacting with a material world. The important thing to notice here is that the cognitive properties of the human in this case are different than the cognitive properties of the system that is made up of the human in interaction with these symbols. The human with his/her mediational means is a sociocultural system.

Theoretical background

12

Now, for Turing the essentials involved patterns of manipulations of symbols. The whole point with the Physical Symbol System architecture of cognition (see the section Cognitive science) is that formal manipulation of symbols can be implemented in any hardware. But these patterns of manipulations of symbols expressly do not involve the psychological processes which a mathematician uses in order to accomplish manipulations. The essentials of the abstract manipulation of symbols are precisely not what the person does. What Turing modelled was the computational properties of a sociocultural system. The rulebook is replaced by abstract rules, also inside the computer. The mathematician who was a person interacting with a material world is neither modelled by this system nor replaced in it by something else. The only thing that remained of the person was the insideoutside boundary. This boundary was assumed to be the boundary of the skin and the skull. In fact it was the boundary of the formal system. Hence this is not a model of the processes engaged in by a person doing the task. These programs produce the properties of a sociocultural system rather than a person and this is what cognitive science failed to notice. In the discipline of artificial intelligence (AI), then, the brain was removed and replaced by a computer. The side effects were that the hands, eyes, ears the nose, and the emotions fell off in this replacement. The whole idea in AI was to create the computer in the image of the man by joining forces in information systems and psychology. Hutchins summarises this as:
The computer was not made in the image of the person. The computer was made in the image of the formal manipulations of abstract symbols. And the last 30 years of cognitive science can be seen as attempts to remake the person in the image of the computer. Hutchins, 1995, p. 363

Unfortunately, as follows from the discussion, the computer was not made in the image of the man but in the image of a sociocultural system. Ever since the computational metaphor for mind was introduced cognitive science has tried to remake the human in the image of the computer. The language we use for mental events is actually the language we should have used for sociocultural systems to begin with. Thus, speaking of a sociocultural system (humans and artefacts together) as positing cognitive properties and using language for mental events when speaking about this cultural system may seem odd, but is really just something that should have been done from the very start. The problem is that the computer metaphor for mind is so deeply rooted that it is very difficult to avoid using it and fall back to GOFAI (Good Old Fashion Artificial Intelligence) reasoning. As will be discussed in the next chapter this kind of thinking is embedded in our language, which make it even harder to discuss the issues. This is because language is a tool, just as any other (though more powerful), and it constrains and frames actions that are mediated by it, such as reasoning. The mistakes of AI to take a virtual machine enacted in the interactions of real persons with a material world and make it the architecture of cognition has consequences. Note that in the quote from Dennett above the symbols that Turing manipulated were originally outside the person on a piece of paper. When the brain was replaced by the computer the apparatus that fell of (hands, eyes etc.) was exactly the apparatus that was needed to interact with these symbols. Instead the symbols were put inside. Then the physical aspects were rendered irrelevant as constituting an implementation detail. It should now be clear that the enterprises in cognitive science do not model real cognitive systems. From the beginning, the idea was to defer consideration of affect, culture, context and history, until such time that there was a good model of how an individual

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worked in isolation. These things could be added on later. However, as I have tried to show here by reporting Hutchins work, this is the wrong approach to take:
Within this underlying theory of cognition there can be no integration of emotion, because the part of the cultural system that is the basis of the physical symbol system excludes emotion. The integration of cognition with action will remain difficult because the central hypothesis separates cognition and action by definition. History and context and culture will always be seen as add-ons to the system, rather than as integral parts of the cognitive process, because they are by definition outside the boundaries of the cognitive system. Hutchins, 1995, p. 368

Norman (1993) drives a similar argumentation claiming that the focus in cognitive science is not determined by what is really important but by what can be measured by todays tools:
Humans are extremely complex, the most complex entity ever studied. Each of our actions is the result of multiple interactions, of a lifetime of experiences and knowledge, and of subtle social relationships. The measurement tools of science try to strip away the complexities, studying a single variable at a time. But most of what is of value to human life results from the interaction of the parts: when we measure simple, single variables, we miss the point. Norman, 1993, p. 15

While cognitive scientists, ranging from psychologists to anthropologists, have spoken of culture as a collection of things Hutchins argues that culture is a process. In fact, he writes, it is a human cognitive process that takes place both inside and outside the minds of people. As described above Hutchins proposes an integrated view of human cognition in which a major component of culture is a cognitive process and cognition is a cultural process. The powers and limitations of the mind cannot be established without reference to culture. Taking a sociocultural stance involves radically reinterpreting cognition and other central concepts within cognitive science. The fact that cognition is a cultural process rather than mental and individual does not imply that one should stop speaking about internal representations. There is nothing wrong with studying internal mentalistic functioning of human beings and neither is it wrong to do this in laboratories rather than in the wild. What is wrong is to interpret the results in a too general fashion. Hutchins, in responses to the review of his book explains it elegantly:
It certainly seemed necessary to examine cognition in the wild in order to see the cultural nature of cognition. This is not because laboratory cognition is acultural, but because the tradition that pursues cognition in the laboratory has an investment in believing that the effects of culture can be controlled. Culture is not absent from the laboratory, but the setting is constructed in a way that directs attention away from it. So, while I do endorse a call for more studies of cognition in the wild, I want to be sure we are clear on why that is a good thing to do. The wrong reason to study cognition in the wild is the belief that experiments are a special setting, or somehow different in cognitive or cultural terms from other real-world settings. The reorientation I advocate is not framed in terms of the settings of cognitive performances (lab versus real world) but in terms of the stance we take with respect to the interpretation of the observed behaviour. As Lave, Suchman and others have pointed out, laboratory experiments are just another socially organized context for performance. In a recent special issue of the journal Cognitive Science, a number of authors (mainly opponents of the situated action view) mistake situated action for action that takes place in real world (i.e. non-laboratory) settings. In fact, cognition in the laboratory is just as situated as any other instance of cognition. The implications of the distributed cognition view is not that laboratory research should be abandoned in favour of 'real-world' settings, but that the way that behaviour that occurs in laboratory settings is interpreted should be changed to reflect the ways that subjects make use of cultural resources in the production of that behaviour. Once this is done, however, some of the putative advantages of the laboratory disappear, and perhaps laboratory research becomes less interesting because it will seem to provide fewer answers than was assumed. To reiterate, we need to look in

Theoretical background
the wild, not because that is where the real cognition is, but because that is a place where it is easier to see the cultural nature of cognition." Hutchins, 1996, p. 66f

14

Hutchins demonstrates in his book that one can be in the wild and yet better equipped empirically than in any psychological laboratory with all the variables controlled. The amusing paradox, as Latour (1996) puts it, is that in leaving psychological laboratories for the deck of a helicopter carrier, Hutchins has managed to build a better laboratory, equipped with video and tape recorders and was able to describe in excruciating details the achievements of navigational tasks.

Problems with the cognitive approach

In this last section of the chapter I summarise the critique against the cognitive approach. Although this polarisation has become fatiguing I consider it necessary to be precise in why I advocate another framework. Some of the shortfalls with the cognitive approach are already presented above. Here I will summon the critique under two headings. The alternative, as I see it, is a paradigm grounded in the sociocultural approach. In the next chapter I will present the activity theory, which adhere to the sociocultural approach and that offers a powerful theoretical framework as well as practical conceptual tools to use the theory.

The limits of dualism, mentalism and individualism

The common denominator for these three -isms is related to context. All three strive to find ways to ignore context when studying cognition and all three have influenced the cognitive paradigm. I will discuss them here and argue why they should not have been taken as grounds for an approach to study and understand cognition. Cognitive science is often accused for several kinds of dualism: That between the mind and the body, between external and internal and between individual and social. The separation between mind and body is an inevitable consequence of the decision to simulate the functions of human processes free from their neurophysiological implementation. The separation between internal and external goes hand in hand with the separation of mind and body. These two have led to the assumptions within cognitive science that cognition consists only of mental processes and that these can be studied outside context as general and universal cognitive abilities. Both these assumptions are wrong and the separations are artificial. Their success within the cognitive paradigm probably depends much on that they afford measuring with todays tools and that they fit with the computer metaphor of mind. Hutchins (1995) use the thought experiment the Chinese room set up by Searle to illustrate the point that the present definition of cognition does not capture all there is to it. The story of the Chinese room goes like this: Imagine Searle sitting in a room with a slot in the door. Chinese people come and slip sentences written in Chinese through the slot and Searle slips back other strings of characters which the Chinese take to be clever responses to their questions. To his aid Searle has a basket of Chinese characters and a rulebook that explains which sequences of characters he should concatenate in response to certain strings of characters. Searle does not understand a word of Chinese but he still accomplishes the task with the help of the rulebook and the stored characters. Now, the room behaves as if it understands Chinese yet neither Searle or anything else in the room can be said to have this understanding.

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With this reasoning Searle originally intended to prove his claim that syntax is not sufficient to produce semantics in the ongoing debate of whether computers can be attributed cognitive properties. Although the thought experiment is powerful in its original intent as well, Hutchins interpret it in a different way. He describes the Chinese room as a sociocultural cognitive system and the really nice thing about it is that it clearly shows that the cognitive properties of the person in the room is not the same as the cognitive properties of the room as a whole. The cognitive science approach has modelled the cognitive properties of a sociocultural system, which, in this case, would be Searle inside the room. Real cognition is what we can accomplish with our mediational means and any assessment of cognition must take into consideration the mediational means that are used since their mediation is a crucial part of the action under study: Drawing the inside/outside boundary to firmly thus create the impression that individual minds operate in isolation and encourages us to mistake the properties of complex sociocultural systems for the properties of the individual:
If one believes that technology is the consequence of cognitive capabilities, and if one further believes that the only place to look for the sources of cognitive capabilities is inside individual minds, then observed differences in level of technology between a technologically advanced and a technologically primitive culture will inevitably be seen as evidence of advanced and primitive minds. Hutchins, 1995, p.355

The dualism between internal and external is also due to the computer simulation approach. As described above it seemed at first simplest to abstract away from human interpretation of the outer world, in order to simulate problem solving. From a sociocultural perspective, this is not simulation of cognition. Cognition must be something more than mental. It must be seen as cultural and social. The mentalistic focus on mental phenomena is irrelevant because cognition is always dependent upon what sort of cognitive support, social or physical the actor can make use of. One last illustration of this is made by Perkins (1993) distinction between a person-plus and person-solo perspective in education. The person-solo perspective is most common in contemporary education. Taking a person-solo perspective implies that when measuring performance or knowledge of students it is only the mental capacity of the student that is measured, as in an exam with a sheet of questions, a pen and an answering sheet, where all mediational means are removed. Taking a person-plus stance requires one to see the individual only as one part in a functional system or as an agent acting with mediational means, which mirros the every day situation. It is the student with all the mediating structures, such as textbooks, calculators, teachers, friends, family, that are necessary for him/her to perform in daily activities that consists the unit of analysis. The student learns by making use of all these mediating structures. This is also the performing postgraduate situation, except that teachers now are substituted by others such as supervisors, managers and co-employees. The point Perkins makes is that the exam situation in many contemporary schools and universities does not measure the full performance of the individual (person-plus), neither does it measure the skills needed in future working life. It only measures some dimensions of mental capacity, i.e. person-solo. Hutchins (1995) argues that moving the unit of analysis out beyond the skin reveals other sources of cognitive accomplishment. These other sources are however not mysterious, they simply arise from explicable effects that are not entirely internal to the individual. As mentioned the cognitive paradigm is also often accused for a dualism between the individual and the social. This is, for example, apparent in the separation

Theoretical background

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between individuals and organisations, institutions and culture. We speak, for example, of phenomenon such as the military culture, the atmosphere of a pub or the soul of McDonalds as if these existed apart from the individuals that create them. As described above culture is a process. We actively create and affect our culture at the same time as we learn from and adapt to it. We may speak about culture as being there but it is important to keep in mind that its existence is completely dependent on the individuals that create it and the artefacts that capture it. The atmosphere of my favourite student pub down the block is, for example, very special. This atmosphere would not be the same if the management changed the direction towards something else, if the students that work there did not do it for the pleasure of the job but for the money, or if the people who go there would not be students. This, and many other factors, constitutes the culture, or atmosphere, of this particular pub and there would be no such atmosphere if these people, norms and values were replaced by others. Finally, I will criticise the cognitive approach for taking an individualistic stance. Much research has narrowly focused on the individual in isolation and problems and solutions have been considered individual. Often, however, problems are more general. If one individual have a problem it is likely that others within his/her community also experience this. In the sociocultural approach this is a natural inference since artefacts and social constructs mediate the individual activity. Since cognition is distributed the same must be true for the cognitive problems. Many problems and solutions are in fact bound to the sociocultural context rather than to the individual and this will not be apparent until one shift focus from individuals to activities. The individual never acts alone. His or her actions and thoughts are constantly shaped by the cultural-historical context set up by the activity, of which the individual is part. If I would say, for example, that I can choose what I like to wear when I go out this is, in one sense, a lie. My choice is most certainly affected by present norms and rules, by what I want to achieve, by my relations to those who I will go out with etc. This might seem obvious, and on an abstract level it is. But it must also be obvious, then, that by abstracting cognition and studying individuals outside their everyday activities and, hence, their sociocultural context, we can not understand cognition, just because cognition is situated and bound to the activity.

The limits of rationalism

The cognitive approach can be criticised for relying on rationalism. While the critique of the former three -isms is concerned with the focus of the cognitive paradigm this last one is more concerned with the approach. The fundamental rationalist stance is that the proper solution can be thought out. How can this be rationally solved? This is a typical engineering approach where one tries to define the most important properties of the problem and then devise a solution. The solutions that are sought for are the most rational. The rationalistic approach is topdown in that it starts of with a problem (which has been identified by asking people rather than observing) which is broken apart in to finer detail until a rational solution is found. In order to characterise rationalism it might be necessary to polarise it with an alternative non-rationalistic bottom-up perspective, empiricism. In this case the answer would not be found in ones own rational problem solving, but in the study of the problem at hand. Why is this a problem and how do the individuals involved perceive it, would be natural questions to ask. A consequence of this approach is that the solutions that emerge as an understanding of the nature of the problem, as it is experienced by those who have the problem, might result in other solutions

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than the most rational and effective one, but which better fits with current practice and culture. The rationalist approach is hence to think out a solution. This started with Descartes Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Descartes could prove his being by the fact that he could think. Thinking is the holy process; our whole being is in our thoughts. What Descartes never questioned is why it is that he could think. While the cognitive paradigm would argue that language did not develop until we could think the sociocultural stance is the opposite. From a sociocultural perspective language is the master tool that mediates thinking and it was not until language was invented that humans started to reflect on their own being. The most important part of human development started with the onset of culture, which in turn was a result of the ability to have higher mental process by the invention of tools, which mediate action. Activities can not be rationally thought out since an activity is meaningless without its context. Activities can only be fully understood within their cultural-historical context since they depend on the culture in which they exist and their present form is a result of an evolutionary process that has been fuelled by more than individual intentions. The discussion above has mostly been concerned with the approaches taken in cognitive science. But the view of cognition that underlies cognitive science, influenced by dualism, mentalism and individualism, also underlies HCI and other directions within the cognitive approach.

Theoretical background

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Chapter 3
THEORETICAL RESEARCH FRAMEWORK

With this chapter I present the theoretical research framework for this thesis. While I want to keep it short and clear I still must deal with the underlying theories in detail as they are the foundations on which this thesis is built, and I will make use of the concepts in the remaining chapters. I will also get back to some important points stated in this chapter later on and relate them to my research questions presented in the first chapter on the one hand, and to the results of the study that will be presented in chapter six on the other. The theoretical research framework employed here views cognition from another perspective than the traditional perspective in cognitive science. I will use the perspective presented here when I collect and interpret my data. Hence, if you want to understand this thesis you must, metaphorically speaking, wear the same glasses as I have had during the course of this study. In my choice of theoretical framework and approach to the study I hope to avoid the traps of dualism, mentalism, individualism and rationalism. I will try to avoid dualism by viewing cognition as distributed over peoples individual minds and the mediating means that these people employ. By taking activity as my unit of analysis I will also try to avoid separating individual action from organisational context and culture. Furthermore I will take measurements to avoid mentalism with the awareness of the distributed nature of cognition and with the help of a conceptual model that brings with it a wider unit of analysis. I will also be careful not to give in for individualism by using the activity as a minimal meaningful context to understand individual actions. Lastly, I will try to circumvent the traps of rationalism by trying to understand practice by focusing on action and separating between reported and observed activity.

The contextual approaches

Of the four points above on which I summarise the critique against the cognitive approach three concern the lack of context in current and past research. This has been recognised during the last decade and three alternative approaches have emerged. They have in common that they strive for reincorporating context into the analysis, which cognitive science has tried to peal of and ignore. I will call these the contextual approaches. Although I will only use one of these, the activity theory, as my research framework, I will present the other two briefly here before I present the activity theory.

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The contextual approaches all adhere to the sociocultural approach as an alternative stance towards cognition. Although they have their own research agendas they have very much in common. I will, however, not deal with the approaches in detail but only present their major differences. One of the first one to seriously challenge the traditional cognitive science and human-interaction community was Lucy Suchman (1987) with her revolutionary book Plans and Situated Action. This was the beginning of an approach that would be named situated action. In situated action the focus of study is situated activity or practice, as opposed to the study of the formal or cognitive properties of artefacts, structured social relations or enduring cultural knowledge or values. The approach recognises that activity grows directly out of the particularities of a given situation and hence the unit of analysis is the activity of persons-acting in setting, or the relation between the person and the institutional environment (Nardi, 1996c). Cognition is seen as bound to the situation and the activity and cannot be abstracted away or studied outside the context set up by the activity. The other major direction within the sociocultural approach is distributed cognition. The key person behind this approach is Ed Hutchins, who developed the approach together with his research team in San Diego. Key elements are already described in the sociocultural approach to cognitive science presented above, which is based on Hutchins work. Distributed cognition asserts as a unit of analysis a cognitive system composed of individuals and the artefacts or mediational means used. By viewing cognition as distributed, rather than individual, the distributed cognition approach aims to show how intelligent processes in human activity transcend the boundaries of the individual actor.

Deciding on a theoretical framework

Although the contextual approaches, together with mediated action (see Wertsch, 1998) all try to avoid the pitfalls of the cognitive paradigm by taking a sociocultural stance they also differ in some minor respects. One such difference is in the view of humans and artefacts. Distributed cognition views people and artefacts as conceptually equivalent, artefacts and humans in relation together constitute a sociocultural system and the functioning of the individual parts is not as important as the behaviour of the whole system. While situated action models portray humans and artefacts as qualitatively different some approaches within situated action tend to reduce the role of the human as an actor influencing her course of actions. Activity theory, which will be reviewed in the next section, has, in my opinion, a more nuanced view on the relation between people and artefacts. It emphasises the importance of motive and consciousness, which belongs only to humans, and sees artefacts and people as fundamentally different. Artefacts mediate human action, thought as well as behaviour. Besides the nuanced view on the relation between people and artefacts and on human functioning, behaviour and development held by activity theory, the theory, being the oldest of the three, also provide a powerful conceptual model. Considering this I believe activity theory will constitute the best choice of framework in my study when I try to understand current practice and predict the shaping of future activities mediated by a new tool.

Activity theory
Activity theory has got its roots in the classical German philosophy and writings by Marx and Engels, but foremost the Soviet cultural-historical theory of activity

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(CHAT) initiated by a group of revolutionary psychologists in the 1920s and 1930s. One of those psychologists was Lev Vygotsky. He formulated the basic concepts of the approach together with his colleauges A. R. Luria and A. N. Leontev. Vygotsky introduced the concept of mediation and the X terms artefact and tool. Artefacts are all things that are created. They can be both material, such as a hammer, and abstract, such as purposeful social relations and language. Tools are artefacts that are used to interact with S O or control ones surroundings and mental processes. Since all tools are artefacts tools do not have to be material either. On the contrary Vygotsky considered Figure 2: The subject relating to the object of his action either language to be the most prominent tool ever developed direct with lower mental and the best instrument we have to interact with, process or indirect via the use of structure and manipulate our mind and thoughts. As the a mediating artefact. term action is used here thinking is also considered an action and artefacts are used in all actions. Vygotsky argued that we always relate to something via a mediating artefact (for example, a tool or a sign) when using higher mental processes. The lower mental processes, such as reflexes, relate directly to the object of our actions (Figure 2). For a more in-depth analysis of the development of CHAT and how it has influenced activity theory see Bruner (1985) and Veer & Valsiner (1991). Activity theory is a set of basic principles that constitute a general conceptual system, rather than a highly predictive theory. It can serve as a foundation for more specific theories. The basic principles of activity theory include the hierarchical structure of activity, object-orientedness, internalisation / externalisation, mediation and development (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 1997). I will deal with each of these principles here, accept for the principle of object-orientedness, which will be discussed in the following section when presenting the activity system.

The activity system

In his doctoral thesis Engestrm (Engestrm, 1987) further developed the activity theory formulated by Vygotsky and Leontev and introduced the graphical model of an activity system (Figure 3). The model contains three mutual relationships between subject, object and community. An activity is actually a systemic whole in the sense that all elements have a relationship to the other elements. The top part form the original model developed by Vygotsky. It describes how tools mediate the subjects (an individual or sub-group whose agency is chosen as the point of view in the analysis) actions toward a particular object. The object often leads to confusions in activity theoretical reports. Object orientedness is however the most important principle (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 1997) and understanding the activity system model requires first of all an understanding of the object.

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Tools

Transformation Subject Object Process Outcome

Rules

Community

Division of labour

Figure 3: The activity system. Based on the conceptualisation by Engestrm (1987). Adopted from Kuutti (1996).

First of all, the term object has two meanings in activity theory and I have tried to avoid one of them in order to avoid the common confusion. The double meanings derive from the translation of the texts and concepts in activity theory from Russian to English. On the one hand the object is connected to the motive in the activity (see Figure 4):
Every activity is directed towards something that objectively exists in the world, that is, an object. For example, a computer program is an object of a programmers activity. Kaptelinin et al., 1999, p. 28. Italics in original.

It is the object that motivates and gives energy to the activity. While actions and operations change in an activity the object remains the same (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 1997). This sense of the object is simply termed motivation in Figure 4 to avoid confusion. The other sense of the object is the difficult one. In this case the object refers to the one in Figure 3. In this case the object refers to the raw material, or problem space, that is moulded and transformed into outcomes with the help of physical and symbolic, external and internal mediating tools (Engestrm, 1999b). Instruments mediate ones actions towards the object. When planning a project, for example, the material that is transformed into an outcome could be knowledge about available resources and constraints. The outcome is a physical project plan on a piece of paper. Spreadsheets, whiteboards, heuristics etc. mediate ones action towards the object, gradually creating a project plan. Engestrm & Engestrm (1990) give a more straightforward example: The blacksmith (subject) uses a hammer (instrument) to mould a piece of iron (object) in order to produce a sword (outcome/motive). Getting back to Figure 3 the subject is also a member of a community. A community is a group of individuals that share the same overall object. Hence a community may consist of anything from a small team to a whole nation. The subjects relation to the community is mediated by the rules that exist within that community. Rules cover explicit and implicit norms, conventions and social relations within a community. Rules constrain actions and interactions within the activity system. The division of labour, finally, refers to the explicit and implicit organisation of a community as related to the transformation process of the object into an outcome. It refers both to the horizontal division of tasks between the members of the community and to the vertical division of power and status. The

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division of labour mediates the relation between members of the community and the object (Kuutti, 1996). An example adopted from Kuutti (1996) can help to concretise the model. Imagine a software team programming a system for a client. The object is the not-yet-ready system, which should be transformed into a delivered, bug-free application (the outcome). The team is the community sharing the same object, perhaps joined by some representatives of the customer. There is a certain division of labour: between manager and subordinates, between software developers and user representatives, and between the team members. There is a set of rules covering what it means to be a member of this community. Some of the rules may be explicit and set by law, but many of them are most certainly implicit, either as a part of general working culture or developed as the team works together. In each step of the transformation process different set of tools and instruments are used in the transformation process, for example, analysis methods, computers, programming tools, walk-throughs etc. The collection of tools has got a history. It is a result of a process of accumulation and rejection at both company and team level, and additions and deletions to it may occur during any project. Whatever the members of the team do during the project it is shaped by the context of the activity. At the same time there may be another activity where the object is the financial status of the software company and where the community consists of team managers and their superiors. Every team manager has tools and tricks to keep the project within budget and profitable. There is also a certain division of labour and a certain set of rules, probably different from that within the team. A third activity can be imagined whereby some of the team managers compete against each other for an available position as a department manager. Here the object is the relative weight of capabilities and assets, real or imagined, of each applicant in the eyes of the selection committee. These assets can be transformed by increasing ones own assets or diminishing those of others. Each participating team manager has the relevant tools excellent financial results from the project, for example. Again, there is a division of labour, at least between applicants, those who do the selection and those who can affect the selection. There is also a set of implicit and explicit rules of what constitutes correct behaviour in the situation and what does not. According to Kuutti (1996) real life situations always involve an intertwined and connected web of activities as in the example above and these can be distinguished according to their objects. Participation in connected activities that have very different objects can cause tensions and distortions (e.g. the position of the team manager in the example: bug-free delivery versus excellent financial results) (Kuutti, 1996). The same software team activity will however look quite different if we take the point of view of another subject in the community, for instance a designer. Yet both subjects share the overall object the project and the problems connected to it. An activity system is always heterogeneous and multi-voiced. Different subjects, due to their different histories and positions in the division of labour, construct the object and the other components of the activity in different, partially overlapping ways (Engestrm, 1999b). The division of labour mediates the different members relation to the object and the object has different personal sense for each member, depending of his/her role in the community (i.e. the division of labour).

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The hierarchical structure of activity

Activities are structured hierarchically. One activity includes a chain of separate actions that are conscious goal directed processes that must be undertaken to fulfil the object (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 1997). The overall activity is directed towards an object-related motive of which the individual subject is often unaware. Each separate individual action is directed towards a particular conscious goal. Actions are in turn realised through operations that are dependent on the conditions in which the activity is performed. Leontev, who continued the work of Vygotsky on the activity theory, points out that activities can never be fully understood by studying individual actions. The individual actions do not make sense if they are studied in isolation and not being seen as being part of a larger activity with a particular motive. If you study a child play a game such as hide and seek you will not understand what is going on if you study the child alone, as he sneaks behind bushes and climbs trees. You must study the whole activity of which the childs actions is a part
Level Activity
(planning a project)

Oriented towards Motive

(Achieve a good plan)

Carried out by Community

(The team)

Conscious action Automated unconscious processes

Action
(arranging a meeting)

Goal
(Finding mutually suitable meeting times)

Individual or group
(Team leader)

Operation
(Dialling the phone)

Conditions
(The line is busy)

Routinzed human or machine

(Team leader)

Figure 4: The hierarchical structure of activity. Adapted from Engestrm (1999b).

The arrows between the levels in Figure 4 illustrate that the structure of an activity is not static but rather under constant development and change. Operations are, for example, former actions that have been automated to the extent that they can be performed without conscious control. The classic example within cognitive psychology is the non-conscious actions (i.e. operations) of gear shifting while driving a car. The shifting of gears is performed automatically, without conscious awareness. If the conditions change, however, as when you buy a new car with different layout of the gears, the gear shifting operation can turn into a conscious action with a particular goal. For example, if the gear will not fall into reverse the driver will shift focus from the action of driving, to the action of getting the gear in the reverse. The same action would otherwise have been an operation had there been no breakdowns in the performance, which gives rise to a shift of focus. It is, however, important to notice that the actions are still performed within the activity of driving a car (somewhere). The boundary between actions and activities is also relative. An activity can lose its motive and become an action, and an action can become an operation when the goal changes. What is an activity for one person can be an action for someone else. Kuutti (1996) also points out that one and the same activity can be realised using different actions, depending on the situation. On the other hand, one and the same action can belong to different activities, in which case the different motives of the different activities will cause the action to have different personal sense for the subject in the context of each activity.

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Internalisation and externalisation

Vygotsky coined the term Zone of Proximal Development (hereafter ZPD) in his work on developmental psychology. The ZPD was a definition of the difference in capabilities of the individual in isolation and with the help of, what he named more competent peers. With more competent peers Vygotsky intended parents and other elderly with a similar function. When speaking of development Vygotsky wanted to see to a childs potential achievements with the help of others and by imitating and learning from the more competent peers. Referring to the discussion above of the role of artefacts in sociocultural systems the original formulation of the ZPD can be criticised for not including mediational means as components of the ZPD, as in Perkins (1993) difference between personsolo and person-plus (see page 15). This was recognised by Brown (1993) who redefined the ZPD as:
A zone of proximal development is the region of activity that learners can navigate with aid from supporting context, including but not limited to people Brown, 1993, p. 191

According to the theory put forward by Vygotsky the child internalises the potential knowledge within the ZPD. Internalisation constitutes the transformation of external activities into internal ones by moving through the zone of proximal development. Externalisation constitutes the opposite process of transforming internal activities into external. This is often necessary when an internalised action needs to be repaired or scaled, e.g. when a calculation is not coming out right (Kaptelinin et al., 1999). The important difference between the sociocultural and the cognitive view on learning is that the cognitive paradigm does not point out the importance of how the material and social surrounding mediates development. Activity theory differentiates between internal and external activities. Internal activities correspond to the concept of mental processes in cognitive science. External activities are performed physically. Internal activities cannot be understood if they are analysed separately, in isolation from external activities, because it is the constant transformation between external and internal that is the very basis of human cognition and activity (Kaptelinin et al., 1999). When performing an internal activity one does not use any external mediating means, as when calculating 5x5 without help. Knowledge can reside in artefacts as accumulated cultural experience. When internalising an action the knowledge that previously resided in the tool, and emerged in the use of that tool, is transformed and represented in the person. Wertsch (1998) points out that the term internalisation can be misleading since it implies an opposition between external and internal processes that leads to the kind of mind-body dualism that has plagued philosophy and psychology for centuries (Wertsch, 1998, p. 26). It is also problematic because different parties use it for quite different phenomena. Wertsch further believes that the metaphor of internalisation is too strong since many processes dealt with in cognitive science were never intended to be internalised, as follows in the discussion of the missteps in cognitive science on page 12. Instead he proposes the term mastery. I interpret Wertsch as being against the use of internalisation as a transaction of things (e.g. knowledge) across a border (e.g. the mental - the outside world) rather than a transformation of something external into something else internal. With the latter interpretation of internalisation as transformation follows that the formerly external knowledge or action is not the same as the now internal knowledge or action, but they are most certainly related. Although I agree with Wertsch that another term is preferred I will still use the term internalisation in this report since it is an

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established term within the activity theory. The reader should however be aware of my interpretation of the term. The concept of internalisation can be illustrated by an example. Imagine a child learning how to ride a bicycle. In order to be able to get rolling he takes help by a pair of supporting wheels. The skill of how to balance the bike is built in to the structure of the supporting wheels. The child uses the tool over and over again until that time that he can ride the bike without the supporting wheels. The skill that formerly emerged in using the wheels as mediational means is now internalised by the child. It is not easy to avoid thinking of the inside-outside boundary as a border with transactions of information passing through. In fact, Reddy (1993) shows that this is not only embedded in our culture but also in our language. There is not room to give an account of Reddys argumentation here but I will only summon the conclusions. Reddy names the predominant metaphor for communication in the western culture for the conduit metaphor. He claims that it is embedded in our language and frames our thoughts (which are mediated by language as an instrument). This is unfortunate since the metaphor gives a wrongful picture of how human communication works that has devastating cultural and social consequences. According to the conduit metaphor language transfers thoughts by allowing the sender to pack the thoughts into words, in speaking or writing, and send them as through a conduit for the receiver to unpack them, in listening or reading, in the other end. The success or failure of communication depends on the success of the speakers insertion process or the receivers unpacking process. However, since unpacking something is a rather passive process, more often the blame is directed to the failure of the sender to insert the information correctly. The conduit metaphor fosters a view on communication as a success without effort phenomenon. In fact, Reddy argues, the opposite is true. Human communication will almost always go astray unless real energy is expended. No one actually receives anyone elses thoughts directly in their minds. In terms of the conduit metaphor, what requires explanation is failure to communicate. In the alternative view on communication that Reddy describes failure is not something odd:
Partial miscommunication, or divergence of readings from a single text, are not abbreviations. They are tendencies inherent in the system, which can only be counteracted by continuous effort and by large amounts of verbal interaction. Reddy, 1993, p.175

The embedded conduit metaphor turns our language into an enemy when trying to avoid the dualistic view, which has dominated since Descartes. As Reddy shows it is very difficult not to use words which imply this separation of internal and external and that things are transacted across this boundary. Recall that tools enable as well as constrain and frame action according to the possibilities given by the tool. Since language is the most powerful and commonly used mediational mean, the embedded conduit metaphor hinders reflections (mediated by language) on other perspectives of human functioning, such as the sociocultural theories.

Development and history

One of the points made by Wertsch (1998) is that Mediated action is situated on one or more developmental paths. When discussing development Wertsch points

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out that it should be recognised that it is not the agent or the tools that develops in isolation but the mediated action itself. The irreducible dialectic tension between the agent and the mediational means implies that even though changing the mediational means (e.g. introducing new tools) may have a greater effect on production than enhancing the individuals skills (e.g. educating), improvements are not attributable to the individual or the tools solely, but to the mediated action as a whole. The same position is held in activity theory as an understanding of the present use of artefacts requires an understanding of the historical development of the activity and the artefacts involved. Artefacts are not just used arbitrarily. They are the result of a cultural and historical development. As Wertsch (1998) points out the mediational means are often designed and developed for another purpose than for that which they are used. If the purposes conflict with each other this can be one reason to breakdowns in activities. The Dvorak keyboard may serve as an illustrating example. The QWERTY (QWERTY for the top five letters on the keyboard) keyboard that is most commonly used today was actually designed to impede performance. When the keyboard was designed in 1872 one of the requirements was that it should slow down typing so that the typewriter keys would not jam. The skilled typists at the time were faster than the keys in the typewriters and hence the keys jammed. In 1936 August Dvorak devised a new keyboard that would improve efficiency. It was truly more efficient and it is still used to set speed records in typing. It is, however, not used, despite all research that indicate that it, besides being more effective, is easy and fast to learn and that it is possible to switch between the QWERTY and the Dvorak keyboard without difficulties. This reveals something about the power that historical context may have in shaping mediational means (Wertsch 1998). When trying to interpret what a community of people are doing, and why they use a specific set of tools, it is important to have in mind that these tools have developed in the specific community over a long time:
technological change is as much a social as a technical process. Instead of speculating on why this technology has not yet been overtaken by something better it seems more productive to look closely at how this existing technology is actually being used. Hutchins, 1990, p. 192

Mistakes are often done by assuming that the design of the current activity and the mediational means employed is old and (hence) inefficient. New technology is introduced to increase efficiency but instead it demolishes social practices by removing the necessary mediational means that have evolved and been refined over a long period of time. The end result may, instead of a better and more efficient functional system, be a non-working system. In some cases some seemingly inefficient way of solving problems may only be the visible part of a complex system of co-ordination among individuals, where the seemingly inefficient instrument that will be replaced by a modern one is the critical mediating tool between these individuals.

Mediation

The principle of mediation is already introduced above and I will only emphasise its importance in activity theory as it is presented in Kaptelinin et al. (1999). First of all, tools shape the way human beings interact with reality as activities are mediated by tools, internal or external. Furthermore, internal activities are shaped by shaping external ones. Secondly, tools usually reflect the experience of other people who tried to solve similar problems before, and invented or shaped the tool

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in order to make it more efficient. This experience is accumulated in 1) the structural properties of tools and 2) the knowledge of how the tool should be used. The first point is discussed in many theories such as Normans (1998a) discussion of affordances. The second point is, however, more critical for activity theory, which emphasises that a tool comes fully into being when it is used, and that knowing how to use it is a crucial part of the tool.
So the use of tools is an evolutionary accumulation and transmission of social knowledge, which influences the nature of not only external behaviour but also mental functioning of individuals. Kaptelinin et al. 1999, p. 32.

The artefact itself can also represent information explicitly as in a text and implicitly in their structure and shape, as in the example with the calculation above. This information emerges as knowledge in the use of the artefact in the activity.

Contradictions

Activity theory uses the term contradiction to indicate a conflict between two elements in an activity. These contradictions manifest themselves as problems, raptures, breakdowns or clashes (Kuutti, 1996). Contradictions can emerge within activities or as a result of external influence from other activities. Kuutti (1996) describes contradictions as sources of development and a platform from which new learning may evolve. This process can be hastened if the contradictions are articulated and the subjects in the activity get an opportunity to change the current state of affairs. When examining an activity on the level of actions the source of development is breakdowns. Breakdowns hinder a smooth mediation of the tool at hand. For example, in system design an application is said to exhibit a high level of invisibility if the application itself is not apparent but only mediates the action. A breakdown in the action causes the focus to shift from the object that lies beyond the tool to the tool itself. The elimination of breakdowns improves mediation.

Summary of theoretical research framework

In activity theory the unit of analysis is the activity, consisting of a subject (an individual or group), an object or motive, artefacts and sociocultural rules. As pointed out by Kaptelinin et al. (1999), just as we cannot pull apart hydrogen and oxygen if we want to understand water, we cannot pull these pieces apart without violating the very essence of human activity. Understanding human activity requires a commitment to a complex unit of analysis (Kaptelinin et al., 1999). The complexity derives from the basic ideas that the human mind emerges, exists and can only be understood within the context of human interaction with the world and this interaction, i.e. activity, is socially and culturally determined. The activity itself provides the minimal meaningful context for understanding individual actions. The conceptual framework in activity theory and the activity as the unit of analysis forces the user of the framework to analyse action, i.e. doing, in context. Issues that must be dealt with are: What motivates the actor and what is he/she trying to achieve. What role do instruments (not only physical and/or external but also abstract and/or internal) play as mediators in the actors efforts to reach his/her goals?

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What is the historical and cultural background of the development of these instruments and how have they formed and been formed by the activity? How is work integrated into social praxis? How do existing rules and norms and the role the actor have in the community help or hinder reaching the goals of the actor? How and why has the activity developed into its current state?

By making use of this framework in my study, both when searching for and interpreting data, and when analysing the result, I hope to be able to avoid the pitfalls of the cognitive paradigm and achieve an understanding of the current activities and the possible contradictions that exist. With this information at hand it would be easier to see what could be improved by introducing a new tool to support the activity of planning for usability, and what will remain to be done once the tool is introduced.

The role of activity theory in HCI

One of the research questions of this report is whether the activity theory may work as a practical and conceptual framework for HCI and, in particular, aid and function as a tool in a specific design. Several approaches exist to HCI and information systems development, such as usability engineering, contextual design, participatory design and interaction design. Lately several voices have been raised calling for a common conceptual framework for the different directions within HCI. Activity theory has been put forward as one potential framework (e.g. Nardi, 1996). A framework for HCI would be most useful in academia when discussing and comparing different theories and when conducting studies from a general and common framework. I will, however, try to show that activity theory reaches further than that. It provides a conceptual model with can serve as a tool to help understand practice and guide design.

Contextualising HCI

The reader may recall my review of HCI and its abrupt ending somewhere in the mid-eighties. The reason why I did not fulfil the review and give a just description of, for example, usability engineering as it is conceived today is that I will now continue this review from an activity theoretical perspective. As mentioned before, the activity theory has been advocated as a framework for HCI (e.g. Nardi, 1996), and I will present this discussion here. Often the advocates of activity theory are naive in their criticism of HCI and criticise the field as it was a decade ago, ignoring that many other approaches within HCI and HCI as a whole have matured alongside the introduction of the activity theory. Thus, there are many other contextual and more pragmatic approaches to HCI studies. I will, however, only present the activity theoretical approach and I hope to show that this approach provides a framework for HCI rather than a practical method, and that many methods and techniques may be used within this framework. Even though the conception of the user matured in usability engineering there was still a need for a more democratic view. Bannon (1991) argues for a conception of

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users as active experts that want and can change their situation and design new supporting technology, if given a chance. He criticises the human-factors approach for not accounting for users motivation to do their job and change the things that hinder them, but only include them as a factor in the overall design specification.
Within the HF approach, the human is often reduced to being another system component with certain characteristics, such as limited attention span, faulty memory, etc., that need to be factored into the design equation of the overall human-machine system. Bannon, 1991, p. 27

The human factors approach fails to account for individual motivation, membership in a community of workers, and the importance of the setting, all of which determine human action. Thus Bannon uses the term human actors to emphasise the change in perspective. Users are not only test persons but active motivated workers and the application that is built or refined may only constitute one aspect of their daily work. Furthermore, as Bannon points out, people often tailor their system, both with the built-in tailoring possibilities, and by external artefacts such as post-it notes, so users are also designers in this sense. As mentioned above, one side effect of the usability engineering approach was that usability was separated from utility. But we do not only want to design usable system but also useful ones. Therefore, it is imperative that we have ways of finding out what is useful. Bannon (1991) outlines eight suggestions for changes within the HCI field that he hopes might bridge the gap between theory, experiment, system design and the actual work setting.
1.

From product to process in research and design.. More attention needs to be paid to the process of design, that is, working with users in all stages of design, to see the iterative nature of design and the changing conception of what one is designing as a result of the process itself. As Bannon notes this change in orientation has already been achieved within the Scandinavian tradition and in design sciences, such as industrial design. This is also articulated by Grnbk et al. (1993). Most development projects are organised around a project focus, which creates substantial difficulties for full user participation. A product focus often implies a fixed contract which is an obstacle to iterative design. Instead, development contracts should be shaped as process contracts between customer and development organisations with scheduled negotiation activities. Instead of defining the system from advance the contract should outline a set of work tasks which the customer wishes to have improved. Thus, to create better applications developers need to be more concerned with the work process in which the computer systems will eventually be used, and with the outcome of these processes. This suggests a need for a greater emphasis on user-developer cooperation in the development process.

2.

From individuals to groups. Many HCI studies and the application of HCI research in industry often take their focus on an individual working on one computer solving a task. This totally neglects the social nature of work and the importance of co-ordination and co-operation between work processes that is necessary in many work situations. As Bannon concludes: we should support office workers in their activities rather than building office automation systems. From the laboratory to the workplace. Although the field of HCI has matured much since Bannons article the cognitive paradigm with laboratory experiments are still present in the

3.

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industry and within academia. As described in chapter two traditional cognitive science has not proven to be a fruitful ground for HCI since the issue is not about coupling our cognitive abilities to the design of new artefacts but to design artefacts that support real tasks or needs. We should encounter and design artefacts-in-use.
4.

From novices to experts. Even today the majority of experimental studies within HCI focus on first time learners of computer systems or applications, using the application for the length of a test which might be an hour at the most. While admitting that this actually characterises the use of many contemporary artefacts such as most Internet sites, many products, both for productivity and for enjoyment, are used and tailored over much longer periods of time. Often the users are experts within the domain and in using similar or earlier versions of the system. The fact that the user is motivated to use the product to achieve some goals, and that he will put effort in learning the system, is not reflected in short first encounter tests. From analysis to design. According to Bannon, HCI should be a design science where designers put effort in making the process co-operative between users and designers. From user centred to user-involved design. The term user centred is not clear. In some cases it dissolves into platitudes such as Know the user. According to Bannon users should not simply be objects of study but active participants within the design process. This originates from the basic democratic principles in participatory design and the Scandinavian approach (Schuler & Namioka, 1993; Sjberg, 1996) that involving users is both a means for promoting democratisation in the organisational change process and a way to ensure that the resulting system adequately meets the needs of the users. From user requirements specification to iterative prototyping. It has been acknowledged that the standard way of representing user requirements in the functional requirements specification document is often inadequate. Instead of putting all the blame on how the studies are conducted Bannon questions the very assumption that we can map out in advance users needs and requirements successfully through simple techniques of observation and interviewing. As advocated in Greenbaum & Kyng (1991) users need to have the experience of being in the future use situation, or an approximation of it, in order to be able to comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed system.

5.

6.

7.

While HCI have many methods and techniques to understand actual needs and to design solutions through an iterative process many of the most innovative designs are often produced entirely independently of existing theory. The knowledge contained in the body of HCI research is missing some of the elements that can produce significant innovations. Industrial design, on the other hand, has been approaching many of the same problems that human-computer interaction has, but from a very different history and perspective. But while industrial design brings with it a well defined and structured design perspective on development it lacks a theoretical underpinning that can be used to drive design (Blumenthal, 1995). What would be desirable is to take the best of the two approaches. The approach within HCI named Interaction design is a movement in the right direction. HCI should be a design science, like any other constructive discipline. Cohill (1991) points out that the reason that development methods fail in software development is because a confusion of the nature of software development. While most view it as an engineering problem it is in fact a design problem which

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requires a different approach. Cohill suggests a new kind of information system developer, the information architect, who has overall design responsibility for a system and who may supervise a variety of engineering tasks. When developing software, professionals such as programmers are responsible also for the systems quality as usability and design. It is as if, when we decide to build a house or an office building, we hire a plumber to design the building and to supervise the construction. In contrast, when we build a house, we hire an architect, whose basic grounding is design and who also possesses enough knowledge about the components of the house to write high level specifications to plumbers or carpenters, but leaves it to them to actually install the system and make minor changes.

Activity theory as framework for HCI

Human-Computer Interaction has its roots in cognitive science. As proposed in the first part of the theoretical background, using activity theory and adopting a sociocultural stance to cognition brings with it a fundamentally different approach. This approach assumes that what is needed to make HCI a conceptually integrated field is a theory that describes and explains the larger context of human interaction with computers. An important idea in the approach is that both human beings and computers develop in the process of cultural history and can be understood only within a social context (Kaptelinin, 1996). Using activity theory as a framework for HCI does not mean that the results and techniques from the cognitive approach have got to be rejected. On the contrary, one of the strengths of the activity theory is that it can incorporate much of the earlier research within a larger framework. According to Kaptelinin (1996) the standard cognitive psychology is a reduced subset of a cultural-historical activity approach. As mentioned by Hutchins in the quote on page 13 this might, however, diminish the interest of the findings. If there is a common denominator for the seven suggestions for change articulated by Bannon above it might be more context (Kuutti, 1996). The general vector within HCI during the nineties has been in the direction pointed out by Bannon and this is directly related to the very essence of the activity theoretical approach to HCI. An activity theoretical approach to HCI would facilitate more contextual approaches by expanding the unit of analysis. As in the cognitive paradigm activity theory accounts for the increasing unit of analysis posed by examining human activity by considering human interaction with computers as a multilevel hierarchical structure (see Figure 4). But while the goal of the cognitive approach is to take a co-ordinated approach of multilevel information processing in both human and computers, the activity theoretical hierarchical organisation of HCI is determined by its embeddedness into the hierarchical structure of human activity that mediates the users interaction with reality (Kaptelinin, 1996). Levels of interaction is, however, only one dimension in which the traditional paradigm of HCI expands. Kaptelinin (1996) also notes three others. There is a shift of focus from interaction between user and the computer to a larger context of intercation of human beings with their environment. Kaptelinin uses the term computer-mediated activity instead of human computer interaction to emphasise that computers are often not used for the interaction per se, but to reach a meaningful goal that exists beyond the situation of human-computer interaction. The computer (program) mediates this activity. Related to this is the emphasis of HCI as a social process where the interaction with information technology is embedded in interactions with other objects and people. Secondly, Kaptelinin notes the expansion along the dimension of development. Components of human

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computer interaction are not static. The user begins as a novice and often ends up as an expert. An understanding of a particular case of computer use includes an analysis of its history and its potential developmental transformations. Finally there is the individual/social dimension. Today it is often the case that it is not just a question of one but often several users. Kaptelinin (1992a) defines the central problem in HCI as that of optimally integrating computer tools into the structure of human activity. But, as mentioned above, there is also a need to meet the ongoing globalisation and the increasing mundane use of IT artefacts by adopting a design approach to HCI. Activity theory can have an important role to play here as well:
techniques from industrial design and human-computer interaction are most useful only after a specification of the components and functionality of a system have been arrived at. While these two areas contain specification elicitation techniques, activity theory is most useful in determining just what components and functionality the system should provide. The reason for this is that while industrial design and human-computer interaction focus on the user-system interaction (albeit in a social context), activity theory focuses on the users social activity (which includes a wide variety of user-system interactions). Blumenthal, 1995, p. 12

The computer is yet another tool that mediates human activity. Or rather, as pointed out by Laurel (1993) citing Alan Kay, the computer is a medium that can dynamically simulate any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. Hence, it is not a tool although it can act as many tools. As described in the first part of the theoretical background the tool mediating perspective brings with a number of issues that are important. With the tool mediation perspective functionality is not something that a program does, and which has got to be represented in an interface. Functionality is the actions that are possible to do with a program (Laurel, 1993). This definition includes an actor into the concept as well. Adopting an activity theoretical approach to HCI would force the analysis to focus not only on the human and the computer, but also on the objects that the user transforms in the mediating activity of using the computer application (Bdker, 1991). The activity provides a minimal meaningful context for the analysis by including all the resources that the user makes use of in the activity. The step that has already been taken within participatory, contextual and interaction design to look at artefacts in use is a natural step in activity theory since the artifact reveals itself only in use" (Bannon & Bdker, 1991, p. 8). In the existing contextual approaches to HCI the aim is to understand the work practice and the use of technology in a larger context. This is exactly what an activity theoretical approach does by analysing the whole activity (or activities) of which the use of technology is part. The benefit is that this is done using a coherent conceptual framework and with tools both for representing and understanding the activity. To summarise, activity theory can serve as an overreaching framework in HCI providing a common language and a multileveled conceptual scheme from which to discuss different issues belonging to different levels. This might overcome the fragmentation of the HCI field today. Furthermore, activity theory seems to be particularly suited to study contextually embedded interaction with the activity as the unit of analysis providing a minimal meaningful context. The activity theory also offers a promising avenue of thought in dealing with development and dynamic features of human practices since the ideas of change and development are central. The approach brings with it a view on human activity and cognition that is more fruitful and that is tighter coupled with the reality of everyday work than the concepts offered in the cognitive approach.

Theoretical research framework

"Activity theory provides a common set of concepts and vocabulary that HCIresearchers can use, share and build on. Activity theory combines the rigor and dedication to the scientific method of traditional cognitive science with the much needed attention to social and contextual factors necessary for HCI-studies. Researchers who learn Activity Theory will gain a strong conceptual grounding that will make the application of ethnographic methods, participatory design, etc. Much more useful." (Kaptilinin and Nardi, 1997, page 74)

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As pointed out by Kaptelinin (1996) activity theory may also serve as a tool in design by helping designers to take decisions based on data, foremost in early phases. One of the aims of this thesis is also to investigate in the possibilities to use the conceptual tools offered in activity theory in practical design to make clear the needs and requirements of the community and to guide the design process.

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Chapter 4
THE EMPIRICAL STUDY

In this chapter I report on how I went about to understand how people plan their projects today, which category of people that would need support with usability planning and how I could use this knowledge for the design process. The hope is that, after reading this chapter, it will be clear how I have moved from method, via analysis to results. Although the findings in the empirical study relate to the research questions stated in the introduction these will not be dealt with here but in the main result section and in the discussion in chapter six. The process reported on here lasted over a period of three months including interviews, observation, a future workshop, a planning workshop and an analysis of the collected data. As mentioned before, the structure of this thesis does not reflect the structure of the practical work conducted. Rather than being separated in time, data collection, data analysis, interpretation and design were all done in parallel. In order to investigate the first part of the second research question, how can the creation and development of the new activity of planning for usability be supported, my intention was to examine how the planning activity differed between experts and novices. It was also interesting to examine why it was that some experienced planning for usability as difficult while others did not. This required asking questions that captured all aspects of the activity systems and not only the internalised knowledge about usability planning.

Data collection methodology

From the beginning I intended to take an ethnographic approach in the study. There were three main reasons for this. Firstly, ethnographic data would have been valuable in a later activity theoretical analysis. It is appropriate for discovering different activity systems and how they are connected, for defining the object of individuals and communities, for uncovering implicit and explicit rules and division of labour and for detecting which kinds of instruments that are used, and for what purposes. Secondly, an ethnographic approach would also have been useful in defining what Bdker & Pedersen Strandgaard (1991) name workplace cultures. Understanding the culture of the organisation and its historical development up to this point is an important part of an activity theoretical analysis.

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Lastly, inspired by the voices raised within the HCI community advocating the use of ethnography in design (see Lewis et al., 1996; Simonsen & Kensing, 1997; Nardi, 1997) I believe that an ethnographic design approach can prove to be very advantageous if there is enough time and resources available. Unfortunately it proved to be very difficult to take an ethnographic approach. Not only does it demand large resources from the researcher, who has got to spend weeks following people around and observing events as he tries to melt into and understand the culture. It also requires that the organisation that is the object of study can free resources. People have to accept having a nosy man with a notebook following them around, they have to invite one extra person to the meetings and, most importantly, the activity under study must be ongoing. In this case none of this was true. There were no projects that were in the planning phase, it was hard to get people to take me in on the projects, and there was a large scepticism towards the going around and observe approach. Now, since I did not follow people around full time most of the data was missed. Meetings where I was allowed to attend were often cancelled because the issue had already been dealt with informally in the corridor or on the coffee break. In the end the ethnographic approach was completely abandoned. The data consists of four main sources: interviews, observation, a future workshop and a planning workshop. Although all these yielded much valuable information they do not cover all of the data collection. Many insights and ideas also sprung from everyday phenomena which I experienced during my five months long visit in the place of study.

Interviews and observation

All in all there were eight transcribed interviews and a number of other interviews regarding either very general issues or a very specific issue, that were not transcribed. Most of the interviews were conducted early in the study. All of the eight transcribed interviews were recorded on a tape recorder before being transcribed. The first interviews aimed at understanding main issues and the later interviews were directed more towards detailed questions, mostly concerning the nature of planning for usability. The transcribed interviews were transcribed without the use of any formal method or syntax. The types of interviews were also mixed. In the beginning most were done using focus areas according to the approach used in contextual inquiry (see Holtzblatt & Beyer, 1998) while the later interviews tended to have a more structured form with many fixed questions. I believe that a proper contextual inquiry would have been valuable but the opportunity to attend an individual planning session never occurred. The drawback of only relying on reported work procedures is obvious. Since work procedures often involves procedural knowledge and very few actually reflect on their own way of working, reports alone might give a biased or incomplete picture of the situation. Silent knowledge of work procedures could have been more easily incorporated into the analysis through contextual inquiries or ethnographic methods. The need to rely on observed data from many instances is particularly important when trying to understand an organisational culture as an analysis of an organisation as a culture must go beyond any single individuals understanding of the situation (Bdker & Pedersen Strandgaard, 1991). In general the approach was to let the data indicate when an area of interest was adequately covered. When the same answers tended to come again the question

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was no longer posed to subjects with the same company role. I am, however, aware of that much that needed to be included was not accounted for. In part this was because the scope that was set up was large and intended to be explored through an ethnographic approach. The idea was that such an approach would have resulted in both general information about company culture and history, and more detailed material about, for example, the characteristics of the planning activity of experts and novices. But while the methods were adjusted for the changing conditions the scope was not. The intention was to follow up the first eight interviews on subjects and issues that would turn up in the analysis, and which would need deeper penetration. As it happened, there was not time for another round. Usability Special Interest Groups meetings Once a month there was a usability special interest group meeting lasting for three hours. When there was not a guest speaker invited to hold the session the form was usually that the whole meeting was focused on a central theme. The theme could arise from a perceived problem that a group of people experienced and would like to uncover or share with the others, or it could centre on a topic that was considered interesting. In the latter case it was often someone from Zelab who spoke about a phenomenon in usability. Anyone who could get approval from their department to spend time on it could attend the meeting, but it was often only a selection of a core group of people that were explicitly interested in usability. I attended four usability special interest group meetings during the study. The method employed in these sessions was participatory observation. I took notes but participated in the meeting as anyone else in the room. The Delta course The Delta method, which is the tailored usability engineering method used in Ericsson, is taught in a five day long course. The whole course is divided in two parts. The first part, which lasts for three days, is about the Delta method and how to use it. The second part deals with basic cognitive psychology and cognitive science. I attended the first part to learn about the Delta method and to experience how and what was taught. Although I took the course as anyone else present I also took notes about the process in between sessions. Project planning session By the end of the data collection I was invited to attend a planning session for a project that was about to start. The planning took place in a conference room with four participants. It was recorded on tape and analysed afterwards.

Resulting data
The data material that resulted from interviews and observations consists of tapes, transcriptions, notes and collected material such as handouts in usability special interest group meetings. As mentioned before the analysis took place concurrently during the collection of data.

Future workshop

The Future Workshop was originally designed by Robert Jungk to help small groups of people to create and develop creative ideas for a better society (Jungk & Mllert, 1996). It is a method for generating visions and is intended to enable

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prospective users of a system to define the common problems in their present work situation, create visions about the future and discuss how the visions can be realised. The future workshop has successfully been applied within participatory design as a means for users to be able to shape their own futures together with designers (Bdker & Grnbk, 1996; Kensing & Halskov Madsen, 1991; Lwgren & Stolterman, 1998). The future workshop was used to create visions of the future system, to define the target user group and to start a participatory design process. The title of the workshop was usability planning. The four participants were all experienced with usability and had had different roles such as developer, project manager and usability guru. The role usability guru does not actually exist but it was the role that the participant had in the context of the workshop. Although it would have been preferable to include prospective users in the workshop (none of the participants had any trouble planning usability studies) this was not done for two reasons. Firstly, the user categories were very vague at this point and it was not completely clear which the target group was. Secondly, as mentioned above, it was very difficult to get hold of people outside the group of people who were already involved in usability work and experienced of planning. Since the intention was to follow the process described by Bdker & Grnbk (1996) to continue the participatory design process with design workshops later on, it was decided that prospective users could be called in the next workshop. The future workshop is divided into three phases, the critique phase, the fantasy phase and the implementation phase. In the critique phase problems in current work practice are pointed out. In the fantasy phase more or less realistic visions of how it could be are created. In the implementation phase, finally, the most promising visions are discussed and how it is possible to make them real. Originally the future workshop is designed to run for a weekend, or two days. This was, however, not possible in this study. The participants agreed to set aside three and a half hours for the workshop. The future workshop is suitable for generating data for an activity theoretical analysis since the focus is not limited to a single system interaction. Any problem in the organisation that is relevant to the topic at hand is discussed and any vision or solution that may sure a better future is taken serious. This means that a larger range of the activity systems involved is tapped on, and the solutions are seldom found only in the implementation of new artefacts.

Resulting data
The data that resulted from the workshop consisted of sheets of paper with the result from the three phases as well as a video recording of the whole session.

The Delphi workshop

When the interviews, observations and the future workshop had been analysed it showed that there was too little information about how experts in usability plan for others. To investigate into the matter the Delphi technique was applied. The Delphi technique is originally intended for community needs assessment (Carter & Beaulieu, 1999). The name derives from the tail about the Delhi oracle and the approach is to learn from experts within an area. A task that requires expert skills is send out to the participants. When they have solved the task each experts solution is sent to another expert. Expert B gets the solution of expert A, expert C the one of expert B, and so on. Now they will comment on each others solutions

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and, if necessary, make modifications. This passing around will continue until the different experts solutions converge. The implementation was centred on two scenarios where someone asked the three participating experts to help with planning a usability study in a project that was briefly described in writing. In the first scenario the study started on time relative the overall project in which it was part and in the second scenario it started late. Every scenario should be planned for on a phase level (i.e. to plan the resources needed for every phase in the Delta method) in three conditions: with little resources, medium resources and unlimited resources. They received planning templates in Excel to fill in. According to the original Delphi technique they would have had to make six original plans each and a number of revisions for every step in the technique. This proved, however, to be too much to require from people who already work more than full time. Instead the technique was redesigned to constitute only the initial six plans and a later workshop to discuss the lines of action taken. Except for planning, the participants should also take notes either in the Excel sheet or on another paper how they reasoned when planning. These notes should constitute a ground for discussion in the workshop of the different approaches to planning and what general conclusions that could be made.

Resulting data
Since the procedure was divided in two steps there were two separate results. First there was the plans handed in by the three participants. They were analysed for differences and the notes were summarised. The second part was the workshop where the first result was discussed.

Data Analysis methodology

Since the focus of the study was to get an understanding of the activities involved in planning usability in projects the data were analysed with qualitative methods. Larsson (1986) describes a qualitative method as a means of characterising or describing the properties of something. Asplund (1971) in Larsson (1986) gives a illustrating example of the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods: while quantitative methods may, for example, search for the distribution of a particular social phenomena P, a qualitative method would try to answer the question What is P? Another difference between quantitative and qualitative methods is that quantitative methods are hypothesis testing. In quantitative analysis the aim is, however, to test hypotheses through measuring or testing with predetermined categories. Although you can have hypothesis in qualitative approaches as well the essential in qualitative methods is to describe reality by searching for categories. This is not to say that qualitative methods demand an unprejudiced mind, but rather that categories are not used mechanically. Each interpretation of a concrete phenomenon is a creation rather than a mechanical categorisation (Larsson, 1986). Strauss and Corbin (1996) gives a similar definition of qualitative research by saying that qualitative research is any type of research that produces findings not arrived at by statistical procedures or other means of quantification. My analysis of the data is inspired by grounded theory. For reasons that will be reported later I did not fulfil the grounded theory analysis as described by Strauss and Corbin (1996). Instead I modified the methodology to be able to complete a qualitative analysis of the data.

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Validity

Studies using qualitative methods are often claimed to have low validity. The question of validity is however dependent on the goal of the study and the actual methods chosen for procedure and analysis. If the goal of the study was, for example, to describe the distribution of a phenomenon a quantitative analysis would have higher validity. But as the goal is to achieve an understanding of a social phenomenon I would say that a qualitative analysis yield higher validity. This is in accordance with the general tendency within HCI to move from quantitative to qualitative methods for analysis during the last decade. It is the effect of a growing understanding that HCI is not simply an information-processing phenomenon but a social phenomenon. According to Lantz (1993) validity is achieved through an analysis of and entrenching in the parts of the whole and through syntheses where a meaningful pattern emerges on a higher level of abstraction. This pattern emerges when abstract theoretical concepts are applied to the data. The validity of the analysis is thus founded on the one hand on internal subjectivity and on the other on theoretical/external validity. The external validity is the coupling between theory and the phenomenon of study. The internal subjectivity refers to the extent at which the data collection actually mirrors the object of study.

Grounded theory

Strauss and Corbin (1996) describes Grounded theory as a set of methods to build a theory derived from data, systematically gathered and analysed through research process. The aim is to allow the theory to emerge from the data by discovering concepts and relationships in raw data and then organising these into a theoretical explanatory scheme. An analysis following the recommendations in grounded theory starts with descriptions. These are not objective but involve purpose and audiences. Description is the basis for more abstract interpretations of data and theory development. The next step is conceptual ordering. This refers to the organisation of data into discrete categories according to their properties and dimensions. Descriptions are used to elucidate those categories. Once concepts are related through statements of relationship into an explanatory theoretical framework, the research findings move beyond conceptual ordering to theory. A theory is more than a set of findings since it offers an explanation about phenomena. Since the aim of this study is not to develop a new theory I will follow the procedures presented in grounded theory but use concepts found in the conceptual ordering in a following activity theoretical analysis. The procedure will be to relate the data material to a theoretical understanding by integrating concepts into the theoretical framework described. The same theoretical framework that guided the data collection and choice of procedures guides the analysis of the data. When moving beyond description theoretical concepts from the theoretical framework will be employed. The aim is, as articulated by Lantz (1993) to try to clarify the understanding of the phenomenon by employing on beforehand chosen theoretical concepts and apply these on the phenomena of study. The theoretical analysis aims hence at further increasing the understanding of the meaning of the phenomena under study.

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Analysis procedure

As the data was collected it was prepared for analysis. Interviews were transcribed, notes were compiled into texts and illustrations and collected material was summarised in notes. The interviews and observations were analysed separate from the future workshop video and the project planning session but the procedure was similar. First the data was examined to generate initial categories and to discover concepts and the relation among concepts. This was achieved by marking concepts in the transcribed texts and notes. When nessecary comments were added for understanding the concept. The concepts were then collected on post-it-sized notes and put on a wall. I intended to find categories in the concepts by structuring them in an affinity diagram, as described by Lwgren & Stolterman (1998). Here is where I departed from the recommendations in the grounded theory. All in all there were over three hundred concepts that had emerged in the data material, and it proved impossible to find a coherent structure, even when using two large walls, and when the concepts were grouped into initial categories before they were put up on the walls. In struggling with the search for a structure some overreaching categories that many of the concepts seemed to fit into were found. Instead of letting the data speak and build the categories I then started to go through the concepts one by one and place it into one of the overreaching categories if possible, or create a new category if needed. This procedure resulted in a growing descriptive text of the data that were divided into headings corresponding to the categories found. Finally the categories were modified to be included in one another or divided into subcategories, i.e. much like the strategy in building affinity diagrams. Activity theoretical analysis The aim of an activity theoretical analysis is to gain an understanding of which activity systems that are of interest and how they are structured. What motivates the activities, which instruments are used, and how do they mediate actions? What rules regulate the activity, how do the individuals perceive the object depending on the division of labour? When using activity theory to analyse a detailed interaction the starting point is often provided by breakdowns. When does the smooth proceeding of the operations break down and change from operations to actions? In this study the analysis starting on an activity level and interesting departures for change on this level are instead contradictions between different parts of the activity, or in between activities. In prior to the actual analysis, the activity systems of interest were identified from the concepts that resulted form the preceding qualitative analysis of the data, using grounded theory. The analysis started by using the question framework provided by Kaptelinin & Kuutti (1997). It is a matrix of questions distributed over four categories, to assure that one covers as much as possible of the different aspects of the activity system. The four categories are: Means / ends (the structure of activity). How Technology facilitates and constrain users goals and the impact of the technology on resolving conflicts between different goals.

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Environment (object orientedness). Social and physical aspects of the environment of the system that is designed, including requirements, tools, resources and social norms in the environment. Cognition / articulation (internalisation / externalisation). How does the technology to be designed support the mutual transformation of internal and external components? Design for easy internalisation of new ways of actions and for articulation of mental processes to facilitate problem solving and social co-ordination. Learning / development. The developmental transformations of the components in the activity system. As mentioned above contradictions are a source for development in an activity system. When presented as questions-answers the contradictions were much easier to identify and model. A number of activity systems were sketched from the data and related to each other. Some models were related vertically representing the same overall activity but on different levels, where one activity is included in another. Others were related horizontally by sharing some element of the activity system, such as the same object.

Results and analysis of the empirical study

This section presents the results of the data collection and analysis. This will provide a foundation for the design process. As the separation of data collection and analysis is artificial, for the structure of the thesis, so is the separation of prestudy and design. In reality everything from data collection to final prototype development is actually design, and the design process started even before the future workshop was held. The results will be coupled with the data by including raw material where needed. Since all material is originally in Swedish, that which is included in this report is my translation of the original data.

Planning for usability

The most essential question, what is the single motive of the planning activity or why does one plan for usability, was never readily answered. Some possible different motives were, however, found. If the planning responsibility lies in the hands of a project manager one motivation seemed to be to be able to present the use of resources for higher executives. It is not about motivating specific actions, but rather to show that there is a strategy and plan for the use of the money that has been applied for, an economical motive. If a usability team member or a usability engineer is responsible for the planning the motive is often to get as much resources as possible for the usability study and to make the most of these resources. By structuring the study as a plan the frames and limits of the study appear and later surprises may be avoided. Keeping within the time limits of the overall project can also constitute a motive for the planning activity. On a more competitive market the most important thing, from the perspective of the executives, is to get the product shipped on time. One of the major benefits of making a thorough plan is the possibility to coordinate resources. This is also an important motive. By including people as resources in the plan in different stages as they might be needed these people have committed themselves to participation. If this has not been done it is often very difficult to assign resources on short notice and to find mutually appropriate

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meeting times. Here is also where many difficulties with the planning seem to arise. Rationally the planning is an easy task. You only multiply the number of people involved with the number of hours it takes to do the task and thats it. In reality things might be much more difficult and require more effort. If people are contacted to assure their commitment already when the planning is done this involves contacting people, compromising and a lot of trimming. If people are not contacted but only expected to be able to participate, this, as stated above, may cause even more problems. Usually the person responsible for the usability study is asked by a project manager to have a plan ready in a couple of days. The two most common scenarios are that someone does the planning by himself usually by deciding on an arbitrary number of hours, (a sum based on prior experiences but not thought through in the particular study) normally around 1200-1300 witch almost always shows to be an underestimation. In the other scenario a group of people plan together in a conference room. In this case the decisions may be somewhat arbitrary as well. Planning as a group activity tends to be more representative among experts while novices plan alone with a computer tool such as Microsoft Excel. There is an application for project co-ordination and planning, Microsoft Project, but very few actually use it. In the group-planning activity the procedure is often to start from a deadline, such as when a specific document should be handed in, or when the study should be finished. The planning activity then alters between planning forward in time and backtracking from the end. Although people tend to start with a deadline and backtrack most of the planning is often made chronologically, trying to keep in mind the present constraints. If the plan exceeds any constraints when finished, it is modified to fit these constraints as well as possible afterwards. For novices a common action has been to se how others have done before by reviewing old documents and hence make use of others experiences. The planning is often described as a two-step procedure. A plan is produced and checked with the executive, normally a project manager. If there is no immediate comments there will normally be some once the project manager has a definite budget, which might require some changes in the usability plan. More often, though, time is more important than money on an increasingly competitive market, and the project manager normally gets the resources that she demands. This iterative characteristic of planning continues over the course of the whole project. Changed requests, changed circumstances and a project that turns out to be larger in size than was originally planned for all require the plan to be remade many times during a study. Experienced planners say that it is all about experience and heuristics. According to them, this is the major factor behind the difference in preference of planning alone or in group between novices and expert planners. They mean that since usability work and planning differs in many ways from normal top-down engineering activities it may seem difficult, but once one has tried once one realise that it is not that hard.
Nothing is difficult to plan when it comes to usability. Its all about experience. Once one has done it a few times its not that hard. Experienced usability engineer in interview

Some failures in planning for usability that have been reported depended on, according to the interviewees, that the one responsible for the planning had limited experience of usability work and was not the one that performed the usability study. In this case the plan did not mirror the needs in the usability study.

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The interviews only covered three departments within Ericsson in Linkping but all these departments seemed to have local procedures for planning. While people in one department (were the experience of usability work was generally higher) often planned in group and used MS Project people in another department often planned alone using MS Excel to manually draw timelines by filling the backgrounds of the cells etc. In Zelab, the gurus of usability seldom needed to employ any particular external planning tool but could plan alone with only a sheet of paper. The usability experts have internalised the heuristics, knowledge and skill of planning for usability. In general it seems like there are a variety of ways that people plan usability studies and the tools used varies equally much. Some prefer MS Excel while others prefer MS Project. Some plan with pen and paper and some plan on a whiteboard, usually together with others involved in the usability study. Many interviewees regarded Zelab with their expertise as a resource or support that could be tapped on if needed. According to Zelab this is manifested mostly through requests of help with usability planning and it is this phenomenon that they would like to reduce by creating support for individuals to plan usability studies. There were, however an awareness of that Zelab was not an absolute resource, but rather a support organisation that could be consulted, but not required, to help. Since other people ask Zelab for help less resources are left for them to do research and other activities on their agenda. This was the main conflict that initiated the need for a supporting tool and, hence, this study. The study generated a wealth of information about things to consider when planning usability and what is perceived as difficult. There is not room to include this here but the information was used in the design of the new tool and some of the issues will be reviewed in the design chapter.

Missing out the Technical Communicators

As described in the chapter about the context of the study one of the main ideas in the development of the Delta method was to involve the technical communicator in the usability work, as well as including the enabling information in the interface concept. This was a natural step to take since the role of the technical communicator is like the role of the usability engineer in many respects, even before there even was such a thing as a usability engineer. It seems, however, that this has not been achieved in practice. Some technical communicators organised a usability special interest group meeting where they articulated this problem. Before they often were called in to write the documentation after the product was finished. Although this was unfortunate from a usability perspective, at least the technical communicators had more influence on their part of the project. Since structure of the product would not change anymore it was easier to plan the number of hours that was needed for documentation. The technical communicators were responsible for this planning and in charge of their own work. Today the situation is different. The technical communicator is part of a team. Often they have to respond quickly to how much time they need and, as when planning for usability the answer is, at best, based on a good guess. Due to a more competitive market, time is more and more an important issue. The result, according to the technical communicators in the meeting, is that they are not satisfied with the work they accomplish. Normally they are planned to participate in a project from the beginning but usually they still work in another project writing the documentation, and cannot participate until late when the new project has proceeded for a long time, often all the way into the execution phase. Hence,

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when they start working in a project the specifications and requirements are already set and they have to write the documentation as the system is being implemented. This often requires the technical communicator to remake the whole documentation several times throughout execution because the designers change their minds about how the system shall be implemented. This also complicates for the technical communicator to plan her work since the data for making decisions is often insufficient, often consisting of the number of windows that the system will contain. All this was supposed to be tackled by introducing the Delta method, which would assure that every project had a proper system definition were the frames were clearly articulated, and where the design, which included the enabling information, was done and tested before it was implemented. If the technical communicator would be able to develop the documentation at the same time as the system was prototyped the enabling information would be more focused on the actions that should be carried out in the system rather than focusing on the system per se. (e.g. number of screens). It would also be more integrated into the product as part of the interface concept. Furthermore, the technical communicator would be more in charge of her own work and how it should be part of the overall product and hence have less problems with planning and with being dependent on others such as the design team. According to the technical communicators in the meeting this had not been accomplished yet and they expressed a wish to change these circumstances. Again the similarities with the usability community can be noticed:
The knowledge about documentation is to bad. Its all about spreading the word, we must tell people about how important this is. They have to get an understanding of the amount of work that is required to create a good documentation. Technical communicator in a usability special interest group meeting

Prioritising among requirements

A recurring metaphor for usability work has been that of spreading the word and converting and saving people in a religious sense, where usability is the right belief and the traditional engineering perspective is the wrong. Zelab has done the most organised preaching and converting work, but every new converted person is also working for the cause. From the point of view of Zelab and the usability community this is only a way of speech; the last thing that they want is to be perceived as a fundamental sect. Unfortunately it seems, however that this is just the way it has been perceived by those who have heard about usability but who are not personally involved.
Personally I have not been in Ericsson for a very long time but usability is widely discussed and it is extremely large and immensely important. The risk is that other activities are neglected. () In the beginning everyone talked about usability a lot and it was almost like a religion () It is not that I am against usability, but for a more even distribution [of the available resources]. Strategic product manager in interview. it is not that I do not consider usability important, I mean it is, but maybe we could cut down a little here () dont get me wrong I think it is very important but Developer in planning session.

In the above quotes this fear of being considered as taking the wrong stance is visible. Related to this is the concern, present in the first quote, that usability and usability requirements is only one aspect and that there are many other requirements and investigations that are equally important. There is always a wealth of requirements coming from all sides when situated in a project. Since there is no way that all can be considered there is always possibilities for

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negotiation. Although requirements that come from the top are filtered through many stages, in the end it is up to the individual developer to filter among possibilities. Hence, in the end it is always about individual motivation and that one can see the use of it.
There is always an option to negotiate on all levels from management to designers () Sometimes I believe that those who only work with method development has not got a very good understanding. They think: Should it be so difficult to understand to use this method which is so good? Maybe it is, but they have got to understand that there are many others who have requirements. System analytic in interview.

The planning situation is often one of give and take. Some interviewees have questioned if there is not to many resources put in usability from times to times. All systems do not have the same need for a usability study, depending on the degree of interaction. The view on usability as separate from the rest of the development is visible here (see next section); if usability was integrated as a perspective on development the fallout would naturally be a short usability study. Because of the continuing presence of many different requirements there is a need for a more long-term planing for usability that continues in execution and that relates the usability study to other studies in the project.

Separation of usability

A determining factor for usability planning was the difference in perspective on usability. While some people that were interviewed adopted a pragmatic approach to usability that was thought-through and mature there were also tendencies to see usability as an ad hoc process to system development. In the first case usability is seen as pure design; usability is development and design:
Usability and design is one and the same thing. It [usability] was completely integrated into the development [of the system]. We were a core team, including the project manager that followed along all the way into execution. Usability engineer in interview

In this case usability is integrated into the development process to the extent that it is no longer treated as a special task requiring a special team, but is adopted by everyone as a perspective on development. In the other case the understanding of usability is that of painting the corpse. One sense of this is something like fix visual deficiencies once the system is engineered and built. Another, more fruitful, but nevertheless separate view on usability is that of a usability study as being part of the development process but running in parallel rather than integrated with the overall development process. In order to adopt the integrative perspective on usability it is necessary to avoid planning for usability as a separate activity performed by a special usability team. As pointed out by a usability engineer this is however not always possible for various reasons. It could, for example, be practical to keep a separate usability team for geographical reasons, often the usability team in large cross-organisational projects is stationed in Linkping. The separation of usability is, however fuelled by a number of factors which all emanate from the mere conception of speaking of usability in the first place. Once you utter the word usability you have implicitly stated that it is something special, something which has got its own label. If usability would be a perspective on development you would work according to it without needing to designate it with a special term. There is an awareness of this within Zelab, and it was dramatically demonstrated in the future workshop as the usability guru suggested a solution to

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some problems that had been identified in the session. He named the solution Death to Delta. This was dramatic not only because he was a usability guru, representing Zelab, but also because he was one of the key persons behind the development of the Delta Method. There is the Delta Method, the Delta handbook, the Delta course, the Delta extension to SDPM (more on this further on), the usability special interest group, the usability centres set up in different sections and much more that, at least implicitly, designates usability as a special kind of thing. In one sense then, the active missionary work of Zelab and many others actually counteracts its main purpose in the long run. The separation of usability in the organisation has consequences for the activity of planning for usability. In fact, had there not been a separation of usability and design in the organisation there would never have been a need to plan for usability. It would all have constituted project planning, but with a usability perspective implicitly embedded. This is recognised by a usability engineer that was interviewed:
Usability is not a special thing, it is all about design () in fact, you should support project planning rather than planning for usability Usability engineer in interview.

Another implication of the separation of usability is that there tend to be a conflict in group belonging for the usability engineers. There is no explicit support for this in the data but it is one conclusion made in the analysis. The usability engineer or people, who are engaged in usability work in general, often have a double role in the organisation. There are no, or very few, explicit roles in the organisation that are concerned with usability work exclusively. Most commonly one is employed as a designer or project manager, but may work with usability in some projects. This can result in a conflict of group belonging for the usability engineer. On the one hand the usability engineer is member of a usability community within the organisation, consisting of specialists with a specific interest in usability that has got to be kept alive. On the other hand they may be part of a team with different goals, values and norms.

Activating versus passivating

One finding is that which I call activating vs. passive making. This finding emerged in the analysis but it has not got very strong support in the data. It was found that Zelab do a very active job spreading usability in the organisation and they have achieved much on all levels, from management to developers. Zelab is seen as the front figure in this missionary work, also being responsible for developing the Delta Method. One way in which Zelab works with usability in the organisation is by helping other people plan their usability studies. This was the main factor motivating this study since it consumes resources from Zelabs main objective; to overview and integrate current trends in research within areas of interest. Furthermore, and more important, Zelab constitute a bottleneck in the spreading of usability work since there they have to be part of many studies that are made.

The empirical study

today the usability operations is largely limited to the resources on this department, a research department. () We are a bottleneck. () Usability is an expert activity today. As long as this is the case it will never gain wide acceptance. We and a few others are the experts. Very few run their usability work themselves without getting help from Zelab, in spite the fact that many have participated in usability projects before. Usability expert in Zelab

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According to the experts interviewed in Zelab it would be better if people were more active and tried to solve usability problems themselves. Maybe by asking Zelab to quickly review their plan once they had done it themselves. It is a question about personal attitude, that people do not go out and try to do a good job, but ask Zelab for help to be sure.
I really believe that there in many cases is enough knowledge to do a good job. But since there is a Zelab here with people who talk about it [usability] and who have been there for a while it is close at hand to lift the receiver and ask for someone to bounce ideas with. I actually believe that people can work with usability if they want to. Many are competent. Usability expert in Zelab

The problem here is not that Zelab gets too much extra work but that the spreading of usability is hindered:
I do not claim that people hire us too much. I say that we have too much to do and if we shall engage ourselves in every project and if that is a presupposition for the project to become a usability project, then we constitute a bottleneck. On the other hand I believe that if we did not exist it would turn out to be good usability studies anyway. It is unnecessary that we are a bottleneck if there is no actual need for this to be. Usability expert in Zelab

This was also observed on a usability special interest group meeting where a usability engineer asked the experts on Zelab for help. In this case the usability engineer seemed to already have the solution but wanted to check with Zelab anyway, just in case. There might be a contradiction here, residing in the informal division of labour of people in the usability community that was found to exist across departments within the organisation. It is also yet another effect of separating usability and making it an expert activity. Zelab expresses a wish for people to be more active and responsible at the same time as Zelab makes them passive by themselves being a very active actor in the community. One could, for example, as an expert in Zelab, motivate and encourage people to make their own plans and promise to review them afterwards, instead of always saying yes to help. The analysis indicate that this separating and expert making of usability with Zelab and usability special interest group meetings may have another effect, although the data for this is vague. This is that it might be that people come to Zelab for help, not because of the knowledge they posses, but because of the glorified hero status that Zelab possess. Zelab does not only seem to be the most competent group of people concerning usability matters, they also actually developed the method that is used and they conduct research in usability matters. More precisely, when people come for help, it might be that they want to meet and get help from the person working in Zelab, and not only to get some expert advice. If this is the case, substituting the experts in Zelab with an expert system to guide people in their usability work would not do since it was not the knowledge that was the object of the getting help activity.

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Conflicting perspectives

There are a number of contradictions that relate to the difference in perspectives between a usability approach and an engineering approach to development. Conflicts between PROPS and Delta PROPS is a project steering method that is suited for the multi-project environment that characterises Ericsson. It is general and can be used in all kinds of projects but it can also be tailored for any particular project. The PROPS model assures a coherent perspective and a common frame of reference for projects within the global company of Ericsson. In PROPS the project steering is separated from the development method used. In Figure 5 the inner U represents the development model and the outer U represents the project steering model. The project steering model describes which project steering activities that shall be included and which project documents that shall be employed and produced over the course of the project. Even the choice of development model that shall be used is decided within the project steering activities. The development model describes which actual activities that shall be taken in the project. The small triangles in the model represent predetermined milestones where certain deliverables shall have been achieved. The rhombuses represent fixed tollgates. Every tollgate constitutes a point in time when the progress is reviewed. These are included as opportunities to make changes in directions or to quit the project completely. A project is divided into three phases, represented by three parts in the outer U in Figure 5. These are called the prestudy, feasibility and execution phase. In the prestudy investigations are made on whether the project should be carried out or not. The feasibility phase aims at finding out the best way to carry out the project and finally the Figure 5: The PROPS model for project project is performed (implemented) in the organised work. execution phase. When the PROPS model was developed, the feasibility study was supposed to be a planning phase for the actual project occurring in the execution phase. All necessary investigations and planning should be done in the pre-and feasibility study and then handed over to the implementation phase, the execution. This is the typical waterfall model for systems development with one phase preparing the next. With this traditional, product-oriented perspective on systems development, the actual project is in the execution phase. There is were something is actually produced (code). This still seems to be the predominant perspective among higher executives:
The feasibility study is really intended for project planning. Execution is planned much more thorough [than the preceding phases]. the difficult part is that Delta is before the execution. The execution is the actual project work from the point of view of the company. The usability then becomes, oh, well, lets give it some resources as well. Project manager in interview.

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The most commonly used systems development model is SDPM (shorthand for Systems Development Process Model). The idea is that the Delta Method should serve as a complement to the system development model used. In order to facilitate the use of SDPM and the Delta method in combination there is a complementing book to the SDPM manual integrating the two (more on this in the next section). In theory the usability study is supposed to start somewhere in the first or the beginning of the second phase in the PROPS model, i.e. start somewhere in the prestudy or in the beginning of the feasibility study and end before the execution, as depicted in Figure 6.

Figure 6: A Usability study using Delta relative the project model in PROPS.

When asked if Delta could be used as the only development model, to encourage the view of usability as a perspective on development, the reply was that this would not be possible. The Delta method only captures usability requirements and there are a number of other investigations and requirements that need to have process support in a model. In the normal case, and as it has been before, the waterfall model is represented on all levels, from the project metamodel down to the development model. In this case, when usability is not introduced, the designers are responsible for the development and the design of the system from the specifications and requirements that are the result of the two earlier phases in the PROPS model. The requirements often have the structure of it shall be possible to which leaves much room to manoeuvre to the designer as of how it should be implemented. Hence the design work is proceeded alongside the development of the system, or rather, design and development is the same process. The problem, from a usability perspective, is that usability is not even present as a concept. The design decisions of critical aspects such as how to design the representation of actions and interaction in the system is left to many individuals own discretion, who do not have formal training in usability. Now, the HCI scholar will probably exclaim that this is the ideal case to introduce usability and a spiral model of development (see Preece, 1994, for a description of the waterfall and the spiral model of development). This was also what fuelled the development of the Delta Method in the beginning of the 90s. As mentioned above the Delta Method was developed and integrated into PROPS before the execution phase. When performing a usability study the documents and the prototype that result from the study should be handed over to execution for implementation as any other investigation. The problem that arises here, as opposed to usual development is that almost all of the design is now completed before the execution starts. Not only are usability requirements more precise in that they not only say that it shall be possible to do x but that it shall be possible to do x in this way. They also concern the design of the whole system, the user documentation, the application interface and the system components. Thus, documents resulting from a usability study not only require that a system component should be included, but also, to some extent, how it should be designed and implemented. The task of the designers, who often are highly educated software engineers, is now transformed from one of taking decisions and designing, to one of implementing. In a

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discussion with a usability guru about this issue he pointed out that this does not necessarily need to be a bad thing. If the designer is not interested in developing graphical user interfaces she might consider it a relief that much work has already been done. In addition to this, the media for transacting the knowledge from the usability study to implementation are insufficient. It might be difficult for developers to understand the rationality behind certain decisions. Many interviewees have pointed out that it is difficult to hand over a design to somebody else since there will always be things coming up later on that will require modifications.
You cannot think of everything from start. New design issues arise on a daily basis even today [in the end of execution] and then were here to bounce ideas. Usability engineer in interview.

A lot of the knowledge accumulated in the usability team is silent knowledge that does not get included in either the reports or the prototype, but which is still very important. This could, for example, constitute information that everyone takes for granted. I encountered many different approaches to bridge the usability study with the execution phase that people had adopted. One was to smooth the meeting of the feasibility and the execution phase in different ways. In one extreme there was a complete abandoning of the PROPS structure by letting a small group of people, residing in the same corridor, work iteratively throughout the whole project. Here there was a core usability team that was responsible for the project all the way, and other competencies were called in as they were needed. This was, however, a small project and it would be difficult to pursue the same line in a large one. Another approach, which was adopted in a larger project, was to diminish the clear cut between feasibility and execution by involving developers from the execution phase in the usability study in the feasibility phase. As the usability study came to an end, and the execution started, people in the usability team gradually dropped off. The developers that had joined the study, now being converted, continued, however, to work with development in execution and to explain the reasoning behind design decisions. A third solution that was tried out as I did my study was a variant of evolutionary prototyping. The idea is to develop the last prototype in the usability study as if it should be used for real, and then refine this in the execution. Conflicts between SDPM and Delta A similar contradiction as that between PROPS and Delta exists between the most commonly used systems development model used, SDPM, and the Delta Method. As mentioned above, the Delta Method is not a complete development model, but only a method to work with usability within projects. In order to facilitate the use of Delta together with SDPM (an initiative taken within the larger organised effort from Zelab to introduce and spread usability in the organisation) a complementary handbook to SDPM has been written. The handbook, using the syntax and conceptual structure from the SDPM model, shows how to integrate the usability activities proposed in the Delta handbook in the process model and the project work. It is not a secret that it is a hard job to spread usability in an organisation and make people work with it and change perspective. There are numerous articles and books written on the subject and I will not review them here (see e.g., Norman, 1998b; Mayhew, 1999; Rantzer, 1996; Wiklund, 1994). The step of integrating Delta with

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SDPM is only one of many commendable steps taken by Zelab to market for usability within the organisation. There is, however, a drawback to this missionary work. By developing a Delta add-on to the common development process model one also reinforce the conception of usability (e.g. the Delta Method) as being something besides systems development. The development model is SDPM, but there is also an add-on that will make the project a usable project. Although the SDPM plug-in describes how to integrate usability work in the systems development process there is still a sense that usability is not pure design and development here but something that you can add on if you want to. Thus, the sought-for perspective on usability is an integrative perspective where usability and development is one and the same thing. The rules, or tools, that regulate the development process do not mediate this integrative perspective. This is manifested in the seemingly widespread problem with writing usability requirements. Many interviewees report difficulties related to this activity:
how should a requirements specification for user interfaces look like? We dont know that Project manager in interview I think the Delta Method offers little support of how to write a requirements specification. What is a usability requirement? What are usability goals? How do you measure? It is very difficult to separate functional requirements from usability requirements. () So the requirement specification gets funny because the result is a doubling of the requirements, First you write a functional requirement and then you write a usability requirement of how this should be as a usability requirement. Usability engineer in interview

There is an inherent goal built in the structure of the usability community, the methods employed, the tools used and in the knowledge of how these tools should be used that strive for a usability perspective on system development. This comes into conflict with the tools and rules employed in other communities that are part of a development project, which results in confusion and problems in the work.

Reflections on the problems

The main problem, which will be discussed more in depth in the discussion, seems to be that, although certain individuals have adopted a new approach to work iteratively from a usability perspective, the traditional approaches, that advocate other procedures, are materialised in the culture. This manifests itself in the explicit and implicit norms and rules regulating work, in the division of labour, and in the tools (or lack of tools) used. For example, the PROPS method includes checklists that must be checked of at every milestone in the project. These checklists do not mention anything about usability (they may do now, it was one of the first things I was asked to fix). Although far-fetched, one could view this as a usability problem in that the tools that are used do not support working with usability. Rather, the existing rules and tool often hinder usability approaches. Related to the contradictions between a waterfall and spiral model for development, is the view on information as being transacted between the feasibility and the execution phase. The communication metaphor is that which Reddy (1993) labels The conduit metaphor of communication (also discussed in the theoretical background on page 26). The presence of this metaphor is apparent in the PROPS model as information is supposed to be collected in one phase and transacted to the next. As demonstrated by Reddy this is a dangerous and powerful metaphor. Powerful because it is so hard to disregard, since it is integrated into many western

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languages such as English and Swedish, and dangerous because it does not reflect how communication actually works. Furthermore, gaining knowledge, as described in the theoretical framework, is a social process as the learner moves through the zone of proximal development, which consists of mediating artefacts and friends and colleagues. Thus, it is very difficult to explain to someone the knowledge gained in the design process, even more so when the medium for description available only consist of paper reports and a prototype. The solution is, of course, to adopt a process perspective rather than a product perspective and work iteratively with usability from the very start with the designers following along all the way and the usability engineer functioning only as a mediator and a facilitator, and thereby avoiding a transaction point. There is also the contradiction between the systems development model used and the integration of Delta into this model as an add-on. Usability should be considered as a perspective on development and as pure design, at the same time as it is an add-on. This, in turn, is one consequence of the general, but unwanted, tendency to separate usability from other activities. Now, it is one thing to indicate that this is a bad thing, to designate usability as something special and thereby separating it, but it is hard to see how it may otherwise be integrated into the organisation if you are not allowed to talk about it. In general there is a need for a shift from a product to a process perspective on development. Today, with the PROPS project model, the work increments are too large and change requests change the conditions in the middle of an increment. If the requirements were put together in small increments continually with a shorter perspective, every new change request or changed condition would initiate a new increment. A process perspective would focus on the quality of the development process and would facilitate an iterative work process. There is ongoing work in Zelab to develop a new system development process, RDEM (Requirements Driven Evolutionary Model), that will incorporate these ideas, and which will include usability within the model, without mentioning it as something special, to foster the usability as a perspective approach.

Summary of results

Figure 7 summarises the contradictions and problems reported above that were found in the analysis. It represents a fusion of the different activity systems that were found for the activity of planning for usability.
1.

Contradictions between subjects and communities The implicit and explicit rules and norms that exist in the organisation mediate the relation between the subject and the community. Often the explicit rules are dictated by the process models used, of which the most common are PROPS as a project model and SDPM as a development model. The PROPS structure conflicts with a usability approach since the design is supposed to come late and the underlying structure is based on product perspective with a waterfall model and the conduit metaphor as communication metaphor. The separation of usability is fuelled by a number of factors. The method for usability, the Delta Method, is separated from the development model. The existing rules originate in an engineering culture. There is a special usability community with special interest meetings and preservation of special values and beliefs. This is separated from the engineering community as usability is separated from other activities related to development, which results in the usability engineer being member of two communities in a project with

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different rules. The same contradiction is present between the technical community (with special interest groups and informal networks) and the individual technical communicator on the one hand and the engineering community on the other, mediated by rules and division of labour that originates in the engineering culture.
2.

Contradictions between rules and objects The motive connected to the object of planning for and working with usability is to adopt usability as an integrated perspective on development and design. This is hindered by the rules in the engineering community and the separation of usability. Contradictions between subjects and tools The computer applications available that mediate the production of a plan include MS Excel and MS Project. It is expected for new employees to know how to manage these tools but many do not. This results in breakdowns where the supposed operations turn into actions for the subject when trying to figure out how to use the tool. Tools are also used for other purposes than they were originally designed for since there is no tool available for project planning that fills the need. Contradictions between subjects and objects The tools available mediate the relation between the subjects and the object. Normally the object in the project planning activity is the available resources and the present constraints. These are moulded into a plan, which is the outcome of the activity. Other outcomes may also be imagined, depending of the subjects goals. It is difficult to know how to modify the use of resources to fit the constraints. Where should one cut down and how? Which phases in the Delta Method should be included? The Delta Handbook does not give any support since it prescribes all phases and neither does the other tools available. When the activity succeeds it is often because the subject has internalised the knowledge about how to deal with these situations by experiencing the situation before, since the Delta course does not teach this.

3.

4.

5.

Contradictions between communities and objects The division of labour mediates the relation between the object and the usability community. Informally this often emanates in Zelab taking an active role in usability work in the organisation while others get more passive. People ask Zelab with help with their plans and Zelab does the job. At the same time one person interviewed in Zelab complains about them constituting a bottle neck and that people are not more active. It seems, however, that some of the responsibility for this is on Zelab since their active role do not encourage people enough to try themselves.

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PROPS SDPM The Delta Method MS Excel MS Project Whiteboard Usability as an integrated perspective Available resources Constraints Transformation

Tools

3 Usability engineer Usability team Project leader 1 2 Rules Community Division of labour Company role (designer, project leader etc.) Project task (write reports, call for meetings, design GUI, work with usability etc.) Object Process 5 Outcome

Subject

PROPS SDPM The Delta Method

Usability community (the usability network, the usability team) Engineering community (other teams, the project) Technical communicator community.

Figure 7: The usability planning activity. The activity system above represents several different activity systems that have been merged into one for the presentation. The numbers represent categories of contradictions. The relations in the activity systems that contain contradictions have been dotted.

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Chapter 5
DESIGNING SUPPORT FOR THE ACTIVITY

This chapter reports on the design process and procedures leading up to the final design of the new tool. As noted above, even though this thesis is divided in a prestudy- and a design chapter the actual design process can not readily be divided as two separate phases. Instead the design started in parallel with the collection of data for the pre-study. For the sake of clarity, however, I discuss them as two separate phases. The difference between the former and the latter phase of the whole design process (including the activity theoretical analysis) lies in understanding and representation respectively. While the first part focused on understanding current practice, what would be needed to create the new activity and how a new tool could support this process, the second part is focused on how this new tool should be designed. The activity theoretical analysis and the results from the pre-study had important implications on the design. This could be regarded as a requirements specification but it is far more than that. Having analysed the current activity systems and envisioned the future we have not only set up a framework for the design of the new tool but for the whole activity system. Changing or creating activities involves more than the introduction or removal of a new tool. It may necessitate adjustments of the other parts of the activity system as well. The empirical study indicates several contradictions in the present activity systems of people involved in usability work today. Many of these cannot be removed by introducing support in the shape of a new tool. The findings in the activity theoretical analysis and their implication on the design will, however, not be discussed here but in the results. One of the research questions stated above reads How can the creation and development of this activity [the activity of planning for usability] be supported by the introduction of a new tool, and how could this tool be designed? Since the tool can most likely not create the new activity by itself, it is only intended to support the creation of the activity and its further development. In order for the activity to naturally occur there is a need to see to the contradictions found in the activity theoretical analysis that are not dealt with here.

The design process

The general vision was to design a support for the creation and development of the new activity. The solutions that were proposed varied, as will be showed further on, mainly on the dimension of freedom of action.

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Design method

Structured methods for the design were used mostly in early stages to generate visions and to achieve a divergent start of the design process. The design was an iterative process that proceeded much as the description of the design process in Lwgren & Stolterman (1998). Apart from the methods described here there was a continually altering between vision and operative picture, between problems and solutions, and the process involved elements such as externalising, parallel sketching, reflection-in-action, working with alternatives and intuitive reasoning. The visions and ideas were continually externalised to create a dialogue between the material and myself. At several occasions the externalised proposals were discussed with usability experts in Zelab or with prospective users. The methods that were employed are listed below. Although the future workshop is not listed here it also served as a design method to generate visions for the future system.

Structured brainstorming
Brainstorming was used on many occasions to fuel a wider exploration of the design space or to move on when getting stuck. Structured brainstorming was also employed in the critique and fantasy phase of the future workshop.

System transformation
System transformation, as described by Jones (1992), is intended to help generating visions by finding inconsistencies in current praxis. The process is designed to transform an unsatisfactory system by removing its inherent faults. This method was used once in the beginning of the design process. The description of the unsatisfactory system of today was based on the results of the study of the planning activity.

Scenarios
User scenarios were made to generate visions in the early design process and to evaluate the prototypes at later stages.

How to support the new activity

The empirical study with the activity theoretical analysis provided a stable ground on which to start the design process of the tool. As many as possible of the contradictions found should be eliminated in the design of the new activity. Normally a change of tools only change the mediated action of the subject, which may help to circumvent or eliminate any contradictions inherent there. Unfortunately many of the contradictions found did not reside in the relation between the subject and the object but in other parts of the activity system, or in relation to other activity systems. The design of a new tool would hence mainly be aimed at resolving the contradictions between the subject and the object. These are listed under the fourth point on page 54. The object in the new activity is the same, the knowledge of available resources and constraints. It is the transforming of the object into an outcome (a plan for the usability study) that should be supported. The subjects in the new activity will mainly be usability engineers or project managers with moderate or very little knowledge about planing for or working with usability. The

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main role of the new tool will be to mediate the activity of planning for usability and maybe distributing some of the cognitive work to the tool. The redesign of the activity according to the other conflicts that were discovered will be discussed in the main result section. Some of those contradictions may, however be lightened by a new mediating tool. This includes the contradiction between the usability community and the object (number 5) and between the subject and the existing tools (number 3). In the first case the tool may bring with it that more people plan for usability without asking Zelab for help, which would ease their workload. In the latter case the new tool may either substitute the earlier tools that mediated the planning activity (Microsoft Excel and Project), or complement those and instruct on their use. Supporting the development of the activity The results indicate that the major reason that people plan usability studies differently is that they have different experience of doing this. Novices tend to plan alone using handbooks and computer tools while experienced planners prefer to plan together with the people involved in the usability study, without external aids. The experts in Zelab also plan without aid of external tools. It must be presupposed that the experienced planner does not plan without aid but that the knowledge resided outside the expert from the beginning and that he/she has internalised the necessary knowledge and skills by moving through the zone of proximal development. There is an important design principle here. In order to facilitate the development of the whole activity the tool must not automate the task but only support it. If the task is automated the subject would never have to bother about the planning activity and learning would be very slow. Any shift of workload from the individual to the tool must be clearly visible to support learning. The main longterm objective with the new tool is to make the tool itself obsolete. It should support learning the planning of usability studies. When the individual is experienced he/she should be able to perform the activity without external aids as experienced planners do today. Forces operating on the design Since Zelab is the customer of this tool there is another force operating on the design than the one to support the creation and the development of the new activity. This is that the tool should also help in the missionary work for usability within the company. Most acts of working with usability also serve another purpose than that of reaching a particular goal. Since there is always some individual in the setting that has not heard of the concept of usability before every action of usability in that setting also should carry with it pedagogical purposes. Since the customer has an intention of also marketing for usability the tool should be designed to achieve as high effects as possible of informing about and advocating for usability, besides supporting planning.

Design proposals

The use of brainstorming, together with a series of sketches of solutions in different genres and areas resulted in a wide start of the design process. All in all four more or less coherent alternative designs were proposed. I will briefly present them here.

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They were based on a requirements specification that was written on basis of the results from the empirical study. Expert systems Several of the first ideas centred on the idea of an expert system. The expert system would store rules of what constituted good and bad planning in different situations. When using the system one would have to specify enough parameters of the situation at hand for the system to be able to suggest a plan.

Figure 8: Interacting with an expert system through a variant of Schneidermans star field display.

One of the first visualisations of this was based on the star field display (Preece, 1994). In this design proposal the horizontal axis of the screen would represent time. A set of controls on the side would enable the user to interact with the expert system and specify the necessary parameters. Activities would be represented on the screen as rectangular shapes with a fixed height and a width corresponding to their duration in time. When the parameters were changed the boxes would pop-up on or disappear from the screen and their width would change according to the changed needs and conditions. Another design proposal, which emerged for the first time in an interview with a usability expert in Zelab, constituted an add-on to Microsoft Project. This was also based on the idea of that an expert system could be designed and programmed to deal with usability planning. In this case the tool would be built into Microsoft Project as an interactive tool that would aid with the usability planning within the larger project. Somehow it would be possible to change the necessary parameters here which would result in an addition or removal of activities in the list and the Gantt chart. The expert system should aid in difficult situations, as when the resources unexpectedly are cut, and suggest lines of action to take. Compared to the earlier proposal this design is also automated in character, leaving to the user to only take high level decisions.

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The third expert system that was designed was web-based and accessible over the Intranet. This would include some sort of Gantt chart and some functions for adding, removing and modifying actions and relating them to the time scale and the available resources. As in the tool that was integrated in Microsoft Project the available interaction gadgets would mediate the users interaction with the expert system and the expert system would guide the user through the planning.

Figure 9: An add-on to Microsoft project based on an expert system.

Information systems The alternative genre to the formal expert systems that was explored was that of information systems. With an information system I refer to a medium that represent information but which is very little interactive. Two different systems were designed, a web based and a paper based. The rationale in these design proposals was that they would be structurally compatible with any other tools used and that they would encourage the user to try to reason about planning himself by giving examples and explaining the basic reasoning involved in planning usability studies. From the beginning the general structure was a system in two parts. The first part constituted some general information about planning and the second part contained examples in the shape of scenarios. The centrefold in the paper Figure 10: Examples of design proposals of information systems. version provided a concept

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map that would help getting an overview of different courses of action possible in different situations, and how much the different approaches would require in terms of resources. Some sketches were also done on hybrid systems where an expert system solution also contained an information system and vice versa.

Converging the design

All design proposals fulfilled the requirement specification to different extent, and no single alternative could account for all the observed needs. In the end, after weighting the alternatives against each other, and after speaking with usability experts and future users, two alternatives were decided to be prototyped. These were the paper-based information system and the add-on expert system to Microsoft project. Before presenting these I will present some of the main arguments that were taken under consideration for and against the different design proposals. Expert systems Bergquist (1997) concludes in his masters thesis on algorithms and intelligent systems for estimating time factors for project plans at a department in Ericsson Radio Systems, that there is no reliable way to implement such a system. The reasons he enumerates are that (1) There is too much noise in the data and (2) The system that is modelled is not a physical system. The first reason is somewhat connected to the second, however, since the noise depends on the fact that it is not a closed physical system that is modelled but rather an open soft system. Factors such as difference in work procedures, individual motivation and what is included in the plan all affect the estimated numbers each project take. Furthermore, people work in different pace and external factors, such as the pressure one feels, can also influence the work pace. Thus, a completely automatic, self-learning, expert system would most likely not be possible to implement. Even if it would be possible to implement it is doubtful what use it would have. One of the myths of expert systems that Mosier (1997) account for is that expert systems and automated decision aids automatically make an expert out of a novice. This myth originates in the belief that a novice, armed with an expert system or decision aid, is expected to be able to solve problems beyond the realm of his or her knowledge or experience. According to Mosier this is only a myth, and a dangerous one as well since novices may enter situations which they have no potential to deal with. In the case of usability planning it might not be dangerous but it seems that it is a strong argument against basing a supporting tool on an expert system. Furthermore, it is probably not possible to formalise the knowledge of the experienced planners. The experienced planners seem to solve problems with a range of internalised tools such as different heuristics. This knowledge and heuristics is a result of long experience of usability planning. The experience and internal tools that experts use have been internalised over a long period of time in a social setting. Thus, it seems that it is not possible to implement a system that would replace the need of the usability experts in Zelab today. It is not possible to explain a situation through certain variables alone but understanding a planning situation is based more on intuitive feelings guided by experience. Instead, as mentioned above, one could use this knowledge of how people become expert planners today as a design principle; to design a system that aids people to go through the same process as the experienced planners have.

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Instead of introducing an expert system that would automate the task of usability planning it would be desirable to design a tool that would support not only the task but the internalisation of the task, i.e. the future development of the activity. The ideal support would represent the knowledge about planning and aid the novice user in his or her performance but always letting the user take the decisions. The knowledge and skills that would be represented in the tool would emerge in action and the user could internalise this. In the end there would be no need for a tool since the user would have internalised the required knowledge and skill for usability planning, as have the experts today. Information systems Intuitively, it seems that an information system would better support the internalisation of the activity. Compared to an expert system the information system is passive and requires the user to actively search for information of interest. It calls for much more reflection and effort from the user to solve the task of planning a usability study. Normally this would be judged as a disadvantage, surely we want the users task to be as smooth as possible? Surely the system itself should be invisible, merely constituting a mediating artefact that extends the users cognitive abilities? Maybe not in this case. Of course, it would be preferred if the system would be invisible1, not infuriating with the task, but it seems that this is not possible if we want to engage the user into reflection of the problems as well. Reflection and active participation seems necessary for internalising the skills of planning usability studies. Although the proposed information system designs do not provide active support, as would an expert system, they have other advantages. One such is their structural compatibility with almost any other set of tools that may be used in a usability planning situation, such as Microsoft Excel and Project, whiteboards, pen and paper etc. This is especially true for the paper-based version that affords many things that is not possible on a computer-based system. The paper-based version is portable and can be brought to group sessions and to the workstation. It is possible to take notes and calculations within it. The portable property of the paper-based version also responds to the second force operating on the design, i.e. missionary work. The paper-based version would be possible to hand to someone and say: Go and give it a try. Heres a Brochure that offers some help. The fact that the information systems do not give any active help is clearly a disadvantage. They are very easy to ignore like any other manual, handbook or method that is handed over. This calls for an aesthetically pleasing design that invites to reading and further investigation. Alternatively the conceptual model could be done interactive in the shape of an interface agent. This would, however, restrict the use of the information system to only one application, say Excel, and thus decrease its structural compatibility. Another approach could be to combine the information system with some templates for the most commonly used applications for planning. The job of making a plan from start in, for example, Microsoft Project is tedious since all the actions have to be specified, as well as their duration. If there were ready-to-use templates that were referred to from the information system this would make the task easier.

It is probably possible but my design process did not reach much further than to conceptual design. The final design proposals did not follow a creative and reflective design process which might have resulted in more interactively superior solutions.

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Exploring one alternative Although the information systems approach better seemed to support the activity of usability planning and, most importantly, its development, another design approach was continued in parallel. This constituted a modification of the add-on to Microsoft Project. Realising that an expert system would make an unsure and bad

(a)

(b)

Figure 11: The development of the wizard in project. Figure (a) represents the first sketches. Figure (b) represents a screen dump from the finished prototype.

solution this was replaced with a less intelligent wizard. The idea was that the wizard would ask questions about the conditions for the usability study and the project, compare these to some default values, and then modify a template Project or Excel document in which all possible activities in The Delta Method were included. Even though this strategy would never be able to account for novel situations or give hints about other methods than the Delta Method, it would still provide the user with a somewhat more suited template document than the default. Since the underlying logic was never thought out I was, however, not sure whether this would actually work. Figure 11 (a) represents the first sketches of the wizard and (b) the hi-fi prototype. Although many details changed in the design process and later evaluations the overall structure stayed the same. Navigation is handled through the buttons in the bottom left corner. Although there is no navigation metaphor there are similarities with a CD or cassette player. The pause button will pause the session and let you start again later. The stop button will cancel the session for good and the two play buttons will step one way in either direction of the wizard. Given Laurels (1993) justifying critique against the (mis)use of interface metaphors this choice of

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likening the buttons with those of a CD player might be criticised. It might cause confusion since some parts go with a metaphor and other do not, although, this did not seem to pose a problem in the evaluations. There is always information present about the reasoning going on in each step of the wizard and why the present question is asked. This is presented in the list-box in the left half of the window. All questions are posed in the right half. During the last iteration, just before it was decided not to proceed with this approach, a trial was done with one of the early hybrid designs. The wizard was coupled to the already prototyped usability information web site by a link in the bottom right corner. This was appreciated in the evaluations. All in all the wizard consisted of a series of 9 screens and a counter in the bottom Figure 12: Microsoft project with the wizard in the foreground. right corner (see Figure 11 b) let the user know how many screens remain. User evaluation Both the alternative designs were evaluated informally with usability experts and future users. The evaluations were more or less discussion sessions to which I brought some sketches. Three semi-structured evaluations were done with both design alternatives and they gave rise to some important redesigns. The assignment that this thesis is centred around included a development of a functional prototype. In the final evaluations with a double2 expert at Zelab it was decided that there was not time to evaluate the alternatives in an empirical test. In part because it was uncertain whether the wizard was feasible to implement or not, and in part because the results indicated that an information system would make a better support, the latter alternative stayed while the wizard was left at this stage. The information system had been redesigned several times by this time and high fidelity prototypes were available. The system was separated in two complementing versions, one web site and one brochure. The final design will be presented in the next section.

The final design proposal

As mentioned the final design was separated into one brochure and one web site. Actually, the brochure was also supplemented with a credit card shaped remembercard, which I will describe further soon. The reason for this separation into two systems was from the beginning that there was a need for a web site to link to the

A double expert is someone who is an expert on usability matters and an expert within the domain of study.

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different planning templates available for Microsoft Project and Excel. In the user evaluations it was however discovered that most people preferred to have it available online since there is where they usually search for information. At a start the brochure and the site contained different general information about usability planning but during the evaluations this was changed as well.

The web site

Figure 13 below shows the first page in the web-site. As can be seen from the menu in the top left corner (enlarged in the figure) the site contains six different sections. These are, except for the start page, Usability planning, Scenarios, Methods and techniques, Resources and links and Share experiences. I will briefly go through each section here. The start page is only intended to present the web site. It describes the purpose with the different sections and summarises their contains. The menu is placed in the top left corner on each Figure 13: The start page in the web site. The menu in page to be as discrete as possible. The the top left corner is activated and shows the different sections available intention was from the beginning that the pages should be printable for those who did not have access to the brochure. Therefore they had to be designed both to fit the web and the paper medium, hence the choice of navigation. A large navigation bar to the left would take to much space on the printed page. In the usability evaluations it was found that a better solution would be to include a printable PDF file in each section of the contents for those who would like to print the contains of the section. If this is done the layout could be redesigned to better fit the medium and to facilitate and clarify the navigational structure. The usability planning section consists of two subsections concerning usability planning in general, things to consider and some tips and hints. The text here is the same as that in the first section in the brochure. Altogether there are two scenarios, each constituting one subsection under Scenarios. The two scenarios both have the same background story but they differ in almost everything else. They have different conditions in terms of available resources as time and budget. The main point was to cover the two extreme situations where the usability study get to start in time with a reasonable budget and when the usability study get to start late with a small budget. The characters in the two scenarios have different experience of usability and choose different approaches to problems. The assumptions is that the users should be able to find parallels to the situations presented in the scenario and apply the same reasoning and ideas in their own studies. To help this linking the size of the overall project in which the usability studies in the scenarios are a part is described in the introduction.

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In order to try to make the scenarios more practical and less abstract all actions that are planned, as well as their allocated resources and the reasoning behind this allocation, are presented for every phase in the study. The scenarios are structured according to the Delta Method but not all phases are included in both scenarios due to lack of resources. There are ready-to-use templates in Microsoft Project and Excel Figure 14: Screendump from the middle of the text of the that are available for download first scenario in the web site. from the site. The files that are produced in the scenarios (one Project plan and one Excel sheet) are linked to from the scenario page for review or use. The templates are available for a large and a medium usability effort. In addition to this there is a summary table comparing the two general large and medium usability efforts to the two studies in the scenarios (Figure 15). There is a time perspective built in this table with colour codes marking which actions that were added or deleted from the template in each scenario, and what changes that were made Figure 15: Screendump from the middle of the text of the summary table for a large and medium usability effort and the two scenarios in the replanning. In the respectively. evaluation of the prototype an expert evaluator commented that this summary table would probably make a powerful tool when trying to get a grip of ones own planning. The next two sections Methods and techniques and Resources and links more or less speak for themselves. The methods section describes the delta Method briefly and provides links to the Delta-on-line homepage. There are also links to other sites with collections of methods. The resources in the next section contain foremost the planning templates but also other documents concerning planning for usability, including the brochure. There are also links in this section to the Zelab usability homepage, the usability lab and other sites within Ericsson that are concerned with usability. Finally, the last section, Share experiences, is a discussion forum for issues relating to planning for usability. Although there was never any time to finish the design on this section a conceptual model was made. It should be possible to add ones experiences as a story under the fixed categories of the phases in the Delta Method or under a new category. Other people could then browse the posted stories by searching for keywords or by viewing all messages under one category at a

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time. Except for providing support and ideas for usability planning this would also serve as the building of a network. Since one optionally should be able to specify ones address when adding a story it may be possible to contact people that have experienced and reported similar problems as the ones one search for help on.

The brochure

I will not mention much about the brochure since its contents are the same as the sections Usability planning and Scenarios in the web site. The brochure does however offer many attractive benefits, many of which are inherent in the material. It is a very simple but yet powerful tool. The scenarios probably provide the most practical support offered in the brochure. Norman (1993) writes about the power of stories. He writes that many company decisions, despite the massive amount of facts gathered to support the decision, are often based on a story told by someone in the room in the end. Stories are marvellous means of summarising experiences, of capturing an event and the surrounding context that seems essential. According to Norman stories are important cognitive events, for they encapsulate, into one compact package, information, knowledge, context, content and emotion. Stories have the felicitous capacity of capturing exactly those elements that formal decision methods leave out. Logic, which would constitute the basis of an expert system solution, tries to generalise, to strip the decision making from the specific context and to remove it from subjective emotions. This is why scenarios were chosen in the design. Even though they may not be similar to any users situation they are still acted out within the same cultural context and tackle similar problems that users are apt to have. Together with the summary table of the planning approaches and the templates available in the web site I believe they will make a powerful tool mediating the planning activity. Accept for the advantages inherent in the material used in the brochure the pragmatic design with the practical examples with reasoning and language that is suited to the particular culture may facilitate use and appropriation. The folder affords to be used in practically any situation as a guide and as a tool. It supports individual as well as group work as it may be kept on the desk when writing a usability plan or brought to a conference room to support group planning. In the latter case it may also help as a shared information space from which examples can be taken and comparisons can be made to. This is important since the tool should support the new activity both in early stages when individual work is more common and in later stages when group work is more common. The design should support the development of the activity through internalising of the information and skill represented in the design and through learning in a social setting with the help of more competent peers. The brochure may provide help and guides but it will certainly not make an expert of a novice without effort from the user. The brochure and the overall design encourages the user to take active part and be in charge of the planning activity by reflecting on the problem at hand and to compare it to those of others. The two scenarios constitute one source for comparison. The networking and discussion forum in the web site may support the importance of also taking help of other colleauges. Note that this calls for networking between those who are faced with planning problems in their projects, which rules out the personal at Zelab. Today they have a high workload with planning other peoples usability studies. Tomorrow people might help each other.

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Chapter 6
DESIGNING ACTIVITY: RESULTS, DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

What does it mean to design activity? Is it possible? These are the sort of questions that I discuss and relate to my empirical study and design process in this chapter. I will try to tie the threads together in this chapter and discuss my research questions stated in the first chapter. I will reflect on and try to answer to what extent this study provided answers to the questions through the theoretical and empirical study on the one hand, and through the design process on the other. The first part that I present is the results of the whole study. This will mainly constitute a presentation of my experience of the possibilities to design activities. Since the main results from this study constitutes those from the empirical study I will also summon the findings presented here and how these can be approached in the design of a new activity. This will be followed by a discussion of the approach and its outcome and some questions that have arisen during the course of the study. Finally the conclusions will summon the most important theoretical and practical findings in the thesis.

Results
As previously mentioned this section will present the results of the whole thesis relating to the research questions stated in the introduction in chapter 1. The main focus in this thesis has been on the process rather than on the product. Hence, many of the results relating to findings have already been presented in the results section of the empirical study. The first research question in this thesis reads, Why is it that the activity of planning usability studies is perceived as difficult? The original problem originated in that here is a lack of an activity that one want to occur more frequently. I have investigated into how this activity could be designed so as to naturally occur and develop in a certain direction to finally be equivalent to the activity of experienced planners. The first research question is related to the second: How can the creation and development of this activity be supported by the introduction of a new tool, and how could this tool be designed? By presenting the final result in this study I hope to show how I have approached these questions and what I have found. I will elaborate further on to what extent these questions have been answered in the discussion.

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When speaking of designing activity this should not be understood literally as the design of an artefact. Rather, it involves changing present structures and artefacts in order to present an increased potential for the new activity to occur, and develop in a certain direction. In practice I have approached this problem by studying the present activity systems and by identifying contradictions that open up for different paths of development to the new activity. One such path was the design of a new mediating tool. The empirical study revealed a number of contradictions of which some need to be addressed in the design of the new activity. Some of these may be partially or fully addressed with the introduction of a new tool since this introduction will change the activity and thereby possibly removing contradictions that did not originally reside in the (lack of) tools or their mediation. The results will be summoned for each category of contradictions found in Figure 7 on page 55.

Contradictions between subjects and the community, the mediation of rules and contradictions within rules (1).
Much of this originates in the contradiction within the rules set up by PROPS and that of the Delta Method. More generally it is a contradiction between the mediation of the implicit rules that differ between the engineering community and the usability community, both of which the subject is part. This is not explicitly tackled in the new design other than by creating an awareness of the conflicts. What would really be needed is to redesign the rules by introducing a project steering model that integrates a usability perspective. The training in this method should not mention usability explicitly but it should be implicitly taught to decrease the separation of usability. In the long run this would maybe also diminish the dualistic group belonging for usability engineers. The contradictions in the activity of the technical communicators are approached by explicitly mentioning this and by involving the technical communicator in the scenarios as a natural member of the usability team or study.

Contradictions between the rules and the object (2)

The adoption of the integrated usability perspective is hindered by the engineering culture that is materialised in the rules, artefacts etc in the activity systems. Although the presence of this contradiction is mentioned in the tool it will not help the user since his or her intentions are counteracted by the engineering culture.

Contradictions between the subject and the tools (3)

Many people were not able to use the present tools exploiting their full capacity, which hindered the mediation of the planning activity. The tool will support this to some extent by introducing template documents and examples of what is possible to achieve with other in the scenarios.

Contradictions between subjects and objects (4)

The lack of efficient external tools for the planning task has been the main contradiction driving the design of the new supporting tool. With a diffuse and unclear object the activity stalled and there were no tools that could mediate the understanding. There existed many efficient tools mediating the planning activity, but these were internalised by the experts and it is not clear how much of their performance that depended on skill and knowledge and how much that depended on the use of internalised tools such as heuristics. What was needed was an external tool that would comprise an externalisation of much of the competence,

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skill and tools used by the experts. The tool should mediate rather than automate the planning activity by encouraging reflection and learning through social interaction, in order for the user to internalise the knowledge, skill and tools again. Keep in mind here that the internalisation/externalisation process constitutes a transformation rather than a transaction. Hence the externalised artefacts may not be the same as the experts once internalised. The same goes for the learning process of the user.

Contradictions between the community and the object (5)

This refers to the discussion under the heading Activating versus passivating on page 47. The missionary work and active work of marketing Zelab as experts and helping others has the consequences that others do not try enough themselves, although they might well do a good job without help. This is a result of the implicit division of labour. The tool might support this in the new activity by letting people create networks and learn from each other. This is, however, only implicit support. It would be desirable to take this contradiction into account when designing the new activity. The division of labour could be changed by Zelab being more determined on that people should try themselves, but still offer advice and to review any ready-made plans.

Discussion
This discussion will centre on the findings in the report, the research questions, the approach taken and other issues that have arisen during the study.

Designing and creating an activity

In this study I have tried to support the creation and development of the activity of planning for usability by examining this and other related activity systems, and by investigating into phenomena that can be changed in order to resolve contradictions within and between the activity today. I concluded that if all contradictions could be addressed there would be no need to support this particular activity but rather the larger activity of developing products from a usability approach. Many people within the company of study have, however, tried to address many of these contradictions before, but it is difficult since it concerns a cultural change, which is a slow process. Instead temporary solutions must be found. One of the easiest contradictions to address was the lack of tools that mediate the planning activity. A design of a new tool would make it easier for the subject to clarify the object of the activity and to reach a desired outcome. Is it possible to design activities? Not in a real sense. I chose this title of the thesis to emphasise the importance to support activities rather than people. The focus on the activity provides a minimal meaningful context to understand individual actions. By focusing on the activity we can discover problems within the whole activity and not only within the interaction between the human and the artefact. By conceiving the whole activity we will, in some sense, design the new activity and not only an artefact. My approach to this was to use the activity theory as a theoretical and methodological framework in the study. There are, however, many things that can be remarked on in my approach. Firstly I may have taken a too wide scope when I approached the research questions. I examined not only the activity of planning for usability but also others. Although this led to many interesting findings this was done on the expense on the internal validity of the study and the design of the

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supporting tool. I did not narrow down the scope when I failed to conduct an ethnographic study and I ended up with a data source that mostly consisted of the initial interviews with too general questions and with a subject population that was almost only representative within the usability community. This was in part due to a bad planning of the study. The intention was from the beginning to use participatory design in the design of the new tool, starting with two future workshops from the usability community and the engineering community, together with the results of the empirical study, according to the approach taken by Bdker and Grnbk (1998). There was not enough time, however, and hence I did not adequately examine the activity of planning for usability in two senses. On the one hand I did mostly speak with people experienced with planning for usability and on the other I did mostly rely on verbal reports of behaviour rather than on direct observation. Since I did not have adequate data for the design this also suffered. I believe that the design could have addressed more problems better if a better data collection and a more thorough analysis had preceded it, both qualitative and activity theoretical. The quality of the result could also have been assessed by prolonging the study and by evaluating and examining the role of the tool in the new activity.

From technology to humans

Many of the findings in the empirical study were related to the frictions that appeared between the engineering community within the company and the wish of some people to change the direction to a human-centred approach. Norman (1998b) describes the process of shifting from a technology centred to a human centred approach. He uses a diagram by Moore to illustrate the life cycle of a product. This is depicted in Figure 16.

Figure 16: The change from technology-driven to customer-driven and human-centred products. Adopted from Norman (1998b, p. 35).

In the early days the innovators and technology enthusiasts drive the market and they demand technology. In the later days the pragmatists and conservatives dominate and they want solutions and convenience. For them, the technology should be invisible. It should merely constitute an infrastructure that mediate activity without breakdowns and focus shifts. When a technology company start their production on a new innovative product it is often only the technology that

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matters. The buyers are technology enthusiasts who prefer many functions and possibilities, and to be in control of the technology through knowledge about it, rather than by simplicity and invisibility. When the product matures, which takes a long time, often half a lifetime, the largest market is not the technology enthusiasts anymore. Now customers have completely other demands and the technologyoriented company is seldom ready for this. This requires a change in perspective on the part of the engineers and the technical community. To meet the new demands marketing soon establishes itself as equal to engineering in influence and power:
Marketing starts to be represented on each technology team, usually resulting in tension between them and the engineering staff. Marketing representatives consult the companys customers and return with a list of necessary and desirable features. These lists drive successive releases of the products. Engineers often resent the influence of marketing. They feel that marketing people do not understand the technology and their lists ask for outrageous things. In turn, marketing may feel that the engineers dont understand the needs of the customers, that they simply want to build new gadgets, regardless of the true market needs. The company is slowly maturing, but at a cost of internal tension. Norman, 1998b, p. 27.

Norman continues to argue that marketing alone can not account for the new needs because they know only what is appreciated, not how it should be designed. In the new market there is thus a need for a human centred approach. Hence, when moving across the chasm in Figure 16 above, the strategy of the business must change. The entire development process must be turned around so that it starts with user needs and ends with engineering. This lengthy extract from Norman (1998b) was included because there are clear indications that the above process is ongoing within the company of study, although, in this case, it is the usability community rather than the marketing department that propels the change. One can of course discuss whether the products developed within the company under study have reached the chasm yet, being mobile telecom network applications. Either way, the change process has been observed. The first research question of this study reads Why is it that the activity of planning usability studies is perceived as difficult? This question was set to force an extension of the problem definition from an individualistic and mentalistic focus of one individual with a goal and a lack of tools to reach the goal, to a problem of the activity of planning for usability. In this study I have presented an analysis that argue that the change process discussed above is constantly counteracted by the culture. The cultural environment into which we are borne contains the accumulated knowledge of prior generations represented in artefacts, rule systems and other cultural and social structures. By mediating our behaviour through these objects, we benefit not only through our own experience, but also from that of our forebears. Thus, as articulated by Cole and Engestrm (1993), culture is, in this sense history in the present. One interpretation of the passage of Norman (1998b) above is that fractions originate in the intentional conflicts between engineers and marketing. In light of the theoretical research framework used in this study, and the results obtained, I would, however, argue that the conflicts reside more in cultural structures within the organisation rather than within individual minds. Thus, the reasons to why the presence of the activity is so scarce lies in the conflicting cultural structures, and the change is mostly needed within existing rule systems, tools and division of labour.

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Extending the context concept Figure 17 represent the usual definition of usability as a sum of the properties of the task, user, system and context. Context in this sense is often vaguely defined and refers most commonly to the physical surroundings but sometimes even to the social context in the work setting. The focus on mediation and history in activity theory and the Task results of this study indicates that this conception of concept is not enough. In order to System User Usability understand an activity we need to know how it is historically situated and culturally mediated. Context Activity theory facilitates the adoption of such a wide focus by providing conceptual tools to Figure 17: Usability as the sum of the properties of the task, context, user and system. structure and analyse data.

Why design a tool?

The suggestions in the results of what and how the new tool can support are all hypothetical. Although many user evaluations were conducted these were informal and tested only some aspects of the design. Furthermore the goal of the tool is to aid internalisation and mastery of the skill of planing usability studies. Since this is a long-term process it could not be evaluateed in an empirical user test. Therefore, I cannot comment on the eventual success of the tool. It seems to me that this approach of letting the experts internalise the knowledge, externalise it into a tool, for the user to finally internalise it again is a long way to go. Why can the usability engineers not learn to plan from the beginning, when they learn about other aspects of usability? This could be done by including the planning of usability studies as a first phase in the Delta Method and as part of the Delta course, just like anything else that has got to be done in a usability study and which is harder to accomplish in situations which do not mirror the course situation. One possibility is to redesign the course to be more authentic and to prepare the students for some of the variety of situations that may appear in dynamic development projects. This is beyond the scope of this thesis. Even though this might call for an extension of the course it would probably be economically justified in the long run. The development of a tool is, of course cheaper and may reach a larger target group but it might not be as effective. It is, however, likely that the brochure developed in this study will be rewritten and included as a first chapter in the next version of the Delta method. If seen from a larger perspective of cultural development within the organisation the approach to invent a new tool way well be justified as a natural step in the overall process of the expansive cycle of internalisation and externalisation (Engestrm, 1999c). Activity development, Engestrm argues, is achieved by discovering conflicts, which leads to externalisation for further internalisation etc. Even though the invention of a tool may seem a long way to take in a short perspective it may well constitute the natural development of the activity, now that these conflicts have been discovered. Of course, the best solution would be that people would not have to plan for usability studies. The planning activity is today a result of the separation of usability in the organisation. If an integrated perspective would be adopted and

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supported in the culture there would be no usability study since usability is merely a quality perspective on design and development of interactive artefacts. There might be a course in planning and performing projects of developing interactive artefacts but no Delta course. As mentioned there is an ongoing work in this direction through the development of a new development method. It requires, however that the project steering model is also changed for projects that aim at developing interactive artefacts, to remove the contradictions between the rules and their mediation.

The use of activity theory

The activity theory has both been used as a theoretical and methodological framework for the study and as an instrument in the design of the new tool and the new activity. Since the tool will be part of the new activity it will also affect its structure and development. Thus, the design of the tool is also, implicitly an approach to a design of the activity. This section discusses the third research question: What practical and methodological support does the activity theory provide when doing HCI studies? Activity theory as a theoretical framework Activity theory has successfully been used in many studies. It is suggested as a conceptual framework for HCI in which studies from different disciplines within HCI can be integrated. While I agree that this would be beneficial for the HCI community I am not sure if it is possible to replace the present cognitive paradigm with the sociocultural and with activity theory. Firstly, a paradigm shift will not occur until enough people are unsatisfied with the existing paradigm and, secondly, the activity theoretical framework may seem to complex to deal with. One reason that the cognitive approach has had such large breakthrough is probably because of its simplicity with the computer metaphor for mind. The activity theoretical approach, on the other side, has developed a theoretical framework to explain a more complex view on cognition. My own experience of using activity theory as a framework in this study is that it may well be complicated. Firstly, the theory itself is theoretically demanding. The ideas and concepts, such as that of mediation, are difficult to grasp. Probably due to the affect that rationalism, mentalism, individualism and, in particular, dualism have had on the western culture in general and in the cognitive research paradigm in particular. Secondly, there are not yet any commonly used approaches to analyse data using the activity theory. The use of the concepts may sometimes seem arbitrary. For example, rules such as the Delta Method may sometimes constitute a tool. Of course, what is what in the activity system differs from situation to situation and in every given situation everything has got its place since the artefact reveals itself to us fully only in use (Bannon & Bdker, 1991, p. 235). Still, it is often far from clear on how to proceed with the analysis and the few studies that exist today where the activity theory has been used in design employ different procedures. Given that the theory and its underlying perspective on human cognition and development is understood it is, however, very useful as a general framework. It facilitates to keep a wide focus and take into account the context; physical, social, cultural and historical. Despite the wide focus it aids in a powerful way to keep an overview over and an understanding of ones data. Both on a very general level with the activity triangle as a conceptual map and on lower levels as well. The hierarchical structure of activity and its dynamics permits us to speak about high level contradictions in the activity system, say on an organisational level, as well as

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about breakdowns in any individuals particular actions, say with a specific application, at the same time. The ability to speak of different phenomena on such different levels and yet be able to relate them to each other within one and the same conceptual scheme is indeed useful. Unfortunately I did not have time to continue the design much past the conceptual design phase why I did not take advantage of these possibilities offered in activity theory other than on a general level concerning the contradictions in the activity systems identified. The framework is open to a variety of data collection techniques, both qualitative and quantitative. It aids in keeping the data structured and to compare different data sources using the same language. It also aids in shifting between any subjects point of view in a particular activity to a more objective perspective in the same activity. When reviewing the literature of the practical use of the activity theory in HCI one thing is apparent. There is practically no consensus of how to go about with an activity theoretical analysis. This was also identified as a major drawback of the activity theory in this study. Even though the activity theoretical framework is still maturing in the HCI community I believe that there is now a need for a guide or tool for performing activity theoretical analysis. As there are methods available for qualitative analysis a tool for conducting activity theoretical analysis would be valuable. Without a practical guide the flexibility of the framework lead to many difficulties. The flexibility of an artefact to reveal itself only in use (e.g. situatedness) lead to confusion of how a phenomenon should be represented in the activity system. Is the project work model a tool for the individual or rules for the community? The situatedness implies that there is no way to tell this unless you speak about a particular situation from the perspective of the subject. This made it difficult to speak generally about the results. The flexibility of the hierarchical structure of the activity to allow activities to become actions and actions to become operations etc. made it hard to define on what level the analysis should be made at. Is the activity of Zelab to help Hanna to plan her project a sub activity of Hannas planning activity or the overall project activity or is it a completely standalone activity that share the same object? Finally the overall approach of how to go about with an activity theoretical analysis is diffuse. Where should one start? What is the goal? This is the other side of the coin of the flexibility to start anywhere, on any level with any activity. To summarise, it is very difficult to perform an activity theoretical analysis and it seems that practitioners invent new approaches as they go about, lacking a tool to guide the analysis. If such a tool would be available it might open up for better analysis and less diversity but probably on the expense of the flexibility of the framework. Activity theory in design I have also used the activity theory in the design of the new tool. The activity theoretical analysis provided a solid base to start the design from and supported the choice of design alternatives. By using activity theory as a framework I was constantly reminded to see to the structure of the whole future activity in which the tool should be part. Furthermore the choice of framework aided me to think of the development of the future activity and not only its present form. This guided the design of the tool to be easy to internalise and to support rather than automate the task. Admittedly, as mentioned above, I could have made more use of the theory by taking another approach and integrating the framwork and analysis more deeply into the design phase of the study. Most of the literature in co-operative and participatory design, the areas within HCI where activity theory has its strongest grounding, concern the development of

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office systems for a specific group of users with specific needs. Today, with the more widespread use of IT and the globalisation of the market, we are moving away from this picture. Many designs more often concern Internet applications (or other media) with a diverse and heterogeneous group of users. Moreover the goal of the application may not be production enhancement but pleasure, joy or satisfaction. As mentioned in chapter two HCI can learn much from traditional design disciplines. Activity theory could, again, provide a stable theory and framework on which to build this knowledge.

Accounting for usability as quality and design

One of the conflicts discovered originated and was fuelled by the separation between usability and design/development. I believe that this is a common misunderstanding in the HCI community. Usability is design and development. No one developing interactive systems would say that they are not concerned with usability; everything is usable to some degree. Yet, approaching design from a usability perspective can be done with more or less experience and knowledge of methods and techniques that will facilitate the approach in different stages of the development process and enhance the result. Here is where the movement towards interaction design may help. Firstly, by speaking of interaction design we point out that it is not possible to deal with either usability or design; it is the same thing. It is not possible to be involved in design without working with usability and it is not possible to work with usability without also being concerned with the design of something. Secondly, interaction design helps to speak of usability as quality. In interaction design the focus is on quality-in-use. Quality-in-Use is the users view of the quality of a system containing software, and is measured in terms of the result of using the software, rather than properties of the software itself. This implies that we should not only evaluate and test artefacts per se but artefacts-inuse. Designing for quality in use is to take a social, behavioural and humanistic focus on artefacts-in-use that can take into account an appropriate balance of the subjective experience, social use and technical objectivity of IT artefacts (Ehn et al, 1997). Hence, by employing the term quality-in-use another important feature of usability is emphasised. Usability is quality. It is a quality perspective on systems development. Nobody would probably question the use of methods or techniques in the development process to assure a certain degree of quality. Likewise, if usability is seen as the quality of using the system it may more naturally become adopted as a perspective on systems development.

We need a new definition of cognition

I believe the view on cognition is the most important difference between the cognitive and the sociocultural approach. It is the definition of cognition, how it should be studied and understood that separates the two approaches. Let me give an example: cognitive psychology differs between short-term and long-term memory. They function differently and have different purposes. Now, the most important memory, the external memory, is not even included in this definition. Still, people would not get by in their everyday activities without an external memory. We structure our life cognitively by writing memo-notes, asking friends to remind us and distribute our mental load by using artefacts to mediate action. A cognitive psychologist would probably say sure, we do this but this is not cognition. Cognition concerns mental processes inside the head. The main problem of the cognitive approach lies in its definition of cognition. A cognitive psychologist or neuropsychologist would find ecological validity in their findings since the limit of the short-term memory is still seven plus/minus two

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outside the laboratory and the brain patterns for recognition are likewise similar outside as inside the laboratory. By defining cognition as what goes on inside the head the cognitive approach will probably continue to find support for their findings but they will not achieve an understanding of real cognition. With real cognition I advocate a view of cognition that is not bound to the head but to the (mediated) activity. If you ask a person to remember 27 items in a lab and then test him the day afterwards on how many he could recall in a laboratory and in a shopping centre the answer would probably be the same, as would the emitting brain patterns. If you, on the other hand studied a person who went shopping, say 27 items for the sake of the argument, you would see him write down the items on a list. The list is the persons external memory, a very important component in human cognition, and a component that will never be factored into the equation of cognition set up by the cognitive approach. I am not saying that we have no use for experiments within cognitive psychology or neuropsychology. What I say is that they only examine a subset of cognition in its real sense. The reader may have noticed in the above passage, how I struggled with the term cognition. This is because there is as yet no alternative term to define cognition from a sociocultural perspective. This should be a definition of cognition that does not only mirror the way our brain works but how we function cognitively. Distributed cognition speaks of functional systems while activity theory speaks of cognition as action. What is needed is a new term that captures the essence of the sociocultural perspective on cognition.

Future work

Obviously it would be both theoretically and practically interesting to se to what extent the tool alone supports the creation and development of the activity of planning for usability. A further examination into the design of a more interactive and intelligent tool than the one that is proposed within this study would also be interesting. This would imply an examination of whether there is anything such as a generally good usability plan and which variables that are most important. Two theoretical issues did also arise in the study. Firstly, there is a need to propose a new definition and term of cognition that refers to the cognitive workings of humans and not only human brains. Secondly, activity theoretical analysis seems sometimes somewhat arbitrary. There is a need to define how an activity theoretical analysis can be approached.

Summary and conclusions

I have studied and redesigned the activity of planning usability studies. Designing activity in this study involved understanding and suggesting changes to the present structure of the activity to increase the potential for the activity to occur and develop in a specific direction. The intention was to support the activity rather than people, i.e., rather than studying the difficulties of individuals the focus was on the activity, which provided a minimal meaningful context to understand individual action. The approach was to identify a number of contradictions within the activity, and in relation to other activities, that hinders the development in the wanted direction. Most of these contradictions are related to the friction that occurs when the dominating engineering culture within the company is challenged by the newer usability culture. It is argued that the contradictions reside more in cultural structures within the organisation rather than within individual minds. The reasons

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why the activity of planning for usability is so scarce origin in problems that are generally more organisational rather than individual. The conclusion is that if all contradictions would be resolved the activity of planning for usability would not exist, since it is a consequence of the contradictions within and in between the activity systems. Hence, there would be no need to support the activity. Most of these contradictions require, however, a cultural change to be resolved. Since this is a slow process it is outside the scope of this study. Instead a temporary solution has been designed as a tool that will support the creation and development of the activity in the wanted direction. The study also put forward critique of the cognitive approach to cognitive science and human-computer interaction. Another approach, the sociocultural, is advocated as better explaining cognitive phenomena. Within this approach activity theory has been put forward as a theoretical framework. Activity theory has also been used as a theoretical and methodological framework in the study and its usefulness has been evaluated. Although the theory is deemed as theoretically difficult it proved to be very useful and powerful as a conceptual and methodological framework for the study and as a tool for analysing and understanding data. It also proved to be valuable in the design process. There was, however, identified a need for a tool for conducting activity theoretical analysis. The main theoretical conclusion in the study is hence that there is a need for a more precise description of how to perform an activity theoretical analysis. The need for a new term of cognition that accounts for cognition as defined from a sociocultural perspective, and that not only includes mental processes has also been discussed.

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