Do I get what AT is?

I have tried to come up with something from our blog fodder this week. I use “something” instead of the truth, “nothing” , to avoid being beat by a hockey stick, although the “something” is a mess.

Activity Theory is object-oriented. People work with a tool to achieve the goal in a social context. There is an arguable point Dave addressed in class: not every activity has a goal. We might buy and use a design without any thoughts.  Designers would have difficulties in observing and inducing a behavior pattern or a specific goal because the goal of using the design is dynamic, various and instinct.  Therefore, it is possible that users would have different actions and operations when using the design. Even worse, they would face different breakdowns. These increase problems need to be concerned during design process.

Another reflection I have about AT is a question to “the social context” discussed in AT. To me, the social context seems to limit to mention a group of people with a same goal. People in the group are like robots. They use tools and behave to achieve “the goal.” I did not see “human beings” in AT. I only saw the analysis of activities and tools. I believe these information will benefit designers when they are doing their work. However, are there something more? Maybe I do not get the whole picture of AT. I really wonder if the experiences, lifeworlds, horizons and the relationship and interaction between people are also the factors should be considered when exploring activities and tools.

 When Dourish explored where the action is, he studied what behinds the action. The motives, values people have when they percept, interpret and react to the world. It seems to me that AT focus on the external thing although the theory does include the discussion of internalisation and externalisation.

Some Questions about Activity Theory and “Limits”

So… Dourish claims that “… if our technical practice is built on those foundations, then the arguments are deeply relevant, because they determine the limits of what can be done and the chances for success of our efforts to have people and computers work effectively together.” In other words, if HCI is rooted in a philosophical foundation, will those “limits” and parameters be better defined and lead to a better outcome.? As I read it, “limits” can be (at least mostly) positive as Dourish describes them. So why then, in Activity Theory would we want to “overcome” the limits by adjusting philosophical foundations?

Is the mediation by tools a limit? The community? Division of labor?

Visual language, emotion empathy, spiritual world

By stimulating sensors, Visual language add much more emotional elements. These elements are the media of the expression of the authors—their knowledge, horizons, skills, desire and much more, and were processed by the watcher’s horizons and experience. A good movie was accepted and favorite by many people, but each person has their own reasons to like it. However, people had more similar experience (age, education, living environment,…) tend to have more similar interpretations. And it isn’t necessarily true due to the complexity of human emotion and the nature of the world. The advantage of visual language is that it leaves enough space for audience to imagine or explore by themselves. And the feelings and believes (our interpretations) were enhanced or gotten more and more clear by the repeating elements of the movie. The repeating things could be motion, sound, sign, or other special expression effects. Some times we find that we lack of words to express the deepest emotions arisen from our heart. And the only thing we can do is to do some actions, real actions, such as sing a song, draw a picture, kick something very hard or drive a lot……water. Just as Tao believes that graphs are the better way to describe than words, I believe that actions is the more effective way to express our emotions. Through this expression and interpretation model, people emotionally and spiritually communicate with each other from the two sides of the media. The visual language connect not only the audiences with the media, but also the authors, actors, all the other people who involved in the making process with the media. Sometimes the virtual world and the real world were mingled together at some point, and you never know what is yours and what is your avatar’s. Although sometimes I believe that I could give my avatar a value at any time, it is not always true.

If we believe that the virtual world in which our avatars live is just a parallel world of our real one, we are just communicating with people (could be avatars), the technologies, the colors, the lines, the motions, the sounds and all the others are just tools, carriers of our emotions.

Some people said that we are all crazy in this world due to its complexity. Communication with others becomes more and more important for our live. Other than those ordinary ways, identity (living style, clothing style, sports and movie types) becomes more and more popular. And of course, the identity embedded in the media becomes a kind of label of the person who use the media. Through these media, we connect with those strangers in different ways. Moreover, this connection is in the spiritual world, and in reality, we use same thing, listen same music, like same movie…AND, SHARE SAME BLOG!