Conceptual Frameworks for Interaction Design: Analysing Activity Theory and Organizational Semiotics Contributions

摘要

Designing systems to mediate actions of people involves knowledge in areas such as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Information Systems, Human Computer Interaction, to name a few. Each of these areas provides its own conceptual frameworks, informed by other areas, such as Sociology, Psychology, Computer Science, etc. It is not always straightforward to choose an adequate conceptual framework to work on problems in which collaboration, work and learning are joint foci of interest. Starting from a concrete research and system design problem for supporting the work of special education teachers in their lifelong learning process, this paper investigates the potential of two theories - Activity Theory (AT) and Organizational Semiotics (OS) - for supporting the different stages of design. Our findings show that, while they are well suited for clarifying the design problem and informing a solution, they provide limited support for the stages of system interaction design and evaluation. In consequence, additional frameworks or an investigation regarding the extensibility of AT and OS are required.