Abstract
This paper attempts to both describe and resolve some of the fundamental differences between the fields of industrial design, activity theory, and human-computer interaction. In particular, the role that social relationships play in using and learning to use artifacts to mediate activities is examined in detail. This examination leads to a unification of theory and practice in the three areas, providing a new perspective for the development of computer-based artifacts (particularly embedded computing systems). Two examples are presented to illustrate how this new perspective can be used both to understand and to guide the process of developing an artifact.
Research described here was done while the author was in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Blumenthal, B. (1995). Industrial design and activity theory: A new direction for designing computer-based artifacts. In: Blumenthal, B., Gornostaev, J., Unger, C. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction. EWHCI 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1015. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60614-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60614-9_1
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