Jared, I think that the characterization of ACD as a subset of UCD is something that proponents of ACD would disagree with. Rather than think of these schools of thought as existing on a continuum, it seems to me that they exist as parallel "systems" that seek to provide a framework with which to design.
Quoting Larry Constantine (who has been writing about this recently): "Activity theory further characterizes human activity as hierarchical. ... activity can be understood at three levels of analysis: activity, action, and operation. Activity consists of collections of actions directed toward goals that contribute to or are related to the purpose of the activity. Actions in turn comprise operations, conscious or non-conscious, adapted to emerging conditions in service of the goals of the actions. " This discussion can be found in Larry's paper on the subject here: http://foruse.com/articles/activitymodeling.htm In this paper, I see at attempt to describe a rigorous system for modeling and understanding user activity in the context of goals, intentions, social context and all of the other higher-order constructs that we say makes "good UCD" good. To me this places ACD not on a continuum with UCD, but rather next to it--and simply working to accomplish the same thing, but from a different perspective. I'm wondering if you've seen Larry's work on this? If so, do you come to a different conclusion than I did? JS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=35466 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
