ACD: An Activity-Focused UCD Method

Activity Centered Design: An Activity-Focused UCD Method

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram

User-Centered Design Methods

Instructor: Evelyn Rozanski
4002-765-90
Fall 2009
Rochester Institute of Technology

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ACD: An Activity-Focused UCD Method

INTRODUCTION
This paper examines Activity Centered Design, an activity-focused user-centered design
method. ACD is quite different from the other UCD methods like Scenario-Based design or
contextual design. ACD helps product developers use human activities as objects for their work,
“offering an activity-centric view of Human Computer Interaction” (Li & Landay, 2008). This
paper talks about the aspects of the ACD method. It takes you through the process of ACD using
an example of several activities (using a mobile phone as an example). To understand the ACD
better, this paper compares it to other UCD methods to find the similarities and differences. I
try to ask a few questions, which when answered, might define a structure for the process.

ACTIVITY-CENTERED DESIGN (ACD)

Activity-Centered Design is a UCD method which has its foundations not only in Human-
Computer Interaction, but also in cognition, computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW)
and participatory design (Williams, 2009). ACD is based on activity theory. Nardi (1996, pg. 7)
defines activity theory as “a powerful and clarifying descriptive tool rather than a strong
predictive theory. The object of activity theory is to understand the unity of consciousness and
activity”. Activity theory basically says that when people interact with their surroundings,
certain “tools” are produced, which are the transformations of their mental processes to
physical form (i.e., the tools). These tools are then used to interact and communicate with
other people. One of the major changes in ACD is the shift from tasks to activities. There is a
subtle difference between a task and an activity. These two terms can be used in a hierarchical
fashion, with activities on the topmost level, followed by tasks. Activities can be comprised of or
an integration of several tasks. Norman (2005) gives an example of mobile phones; they do a
good job of supporting communication activities. The device itself helps you perform several
tasks like calling and texting. Activity theory uses an
activity hierarchy, with three key elements: activities,
actions and operations. In the example of a mobile
phone, communication is an activity, using the address
book is an action and calling someone is an operation. Another important question ACD asks “is

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ACD: An Activity-Focused UCD Method

not what tasks or activities the user must perform with the application but what tasks or
activities must be enabled by the application/tool/system” Williams (2009, pg. 5).
Some authors suggest that Activity theory is not yet developed as a complete process,
that it is largely theoretical in nature. (Williams, 2009)(Gifford & Enyedy, 1999) ACD tries to
combine activity theory with other approaches like situated learning and collaborative learning.
There are others (Li & Landay, 2008) that suggest that although ACD is largely a set of
perspectives and concepts, it’s an art to apply it in practice. ACD seems to minimize the need
to do a few user-centered parts (personas for example) and looks at the fundamental activities
that are more important to the end design. Using the example of a mobile phone, we need not
know the persona of a person (whether he likes calling family or friends or peers) to design the
interface, instead the concentration is on activities like calling, texting or clicking pictures. ACD
seems to look at activities from the system perspective while most UCD methods try to look at
tasks from a user perspective. To elucidate, take the example of the mobile phone again
 ACD: activity based, think about calling, texting, etc.
 UCD methods: task-based think about how a user would go about doing a task like
dialing, typing or adding a phonebook entry.
We can also look at different scenarios which might help understand when using ACD
would make sense over another UCD method:
 A mobile phone manufacturer wants to create software that attracts new customers;
this is when a UCD method like scenario based design would probably help identify the
most important tasks.
 A mobile phone manufacturer thinks about activities that can be done using a mobile
phone, like clicking a picture, for example, you don’t really need to involve the user for
an activity like this, ACD would be appropriate in such a situation.

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ACD: An Activity-Focused UCD Method

It is still unclear whether ACD has a fixed process or structure. Since it is a theoretical
framework, the deliverables and steps of ACD aren’t set in stone yet. A closer look at Activity
Theory helps us identify what could be the important parts/deliverables of the ACD process.
Here is a list of parts in ACD that might prove to be valuable as stages of the ACD process:

Activity Analysis
Activity analysis is the identification or description of activities that are done by the
users of a system/product. Activity analysis tries to answer:

Question The mobile phone example

What are the activities that can be performed Calling, sending messages, clicking pictures,
using the system? browsing the web.

How are activities performed by different users? User 1 uses predictive text input while typing
versus user 2 who types manually.

What’s the time spent on activities? How long does it take to reach the compose
message window?

How valuable is the activity to the overall Is quick dialing really important?
system? Do we need to include a pager number in the
address book?

How intensive is the activity? Will clicking an image use a lot of resources?

The various questions in the activity analysis phase can be answered by conducting field
studies and requirements gathering. A few important questions that might be answered are:
Who are the users? What are the activities? What are the objects that a user interacts with
while performing the activity? How do different objects affect the activity?

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ACD: An Activity-Focused UCD Method

How do people perform activities?

To answer this, a little background on cognition and an understanding of how people
perform actions might help. Activity theory tries to address this. “ACD requires a deep
understanding of the technology, of the tools, and of the reasons for the activities” (Norman,
2005). This could be one of the important steps in the process and may also attempt to answer
the question. At a very bare minimum, a list of the sequence of steps required to perform the
activity may be required. For example, “whats the users motivation in calling somebody?” or a
more rudimentary question that can be asked is “how does the user perform the activity of
calling somebody?”

Can the designer be an expert on activities without external research?

Since the primary focus of ACD is activities and not the user, can the developers become
experts in the various activities performed? Can they come up with valid activities without the
help of external processes like user interviews or contextual inquiries? This is one of the
differences between other UCD methods and ACD. Most UCD methods involve talking to users
or involving users in the process. This also leads us to the question: Do developers working with
ACD need to be domain experts for them to understand activities? Can novice
developers/designers produce reliable results?

Are activities fairly stable and fixed for different types of users?
Users can be unpredictable at times; can the selection of activities address this issue?
Can we come up with a set of activities which are independent of the user performing it? An
example of this would be a Google search, the developer would much rather focus on the
relevance and importance of the search results that worry about different users and how their
personalities affect the search! An activity like Google search would be fixed for all users.
(Although what the users search for definitely varies)

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ACD: An Activity-Focused UCD Method

What activities do we need to support versus what users we need to target.

What are the essential activities that are important in the development of the system?
Would they address our problems? Are these activities independent of users? Will choosing
activities serve our overall goal of creating more usable systems? An important question that
has to be answered here is “Does focusing only on activities and paying less attention to users
affect out high level goal of providing easier, usable software for the users?” Is too much
listening to users detrimental to the development process of the system? We can go back to
one of our logical questions and can ask ourselves if choosing the right activities will help
overcome the problem of the user being unclear about what he really wants.

CONCLUSION
Activity Centered Design is just a theoretical framework and hasn’t matured to the point that it
can be used as a full blown UCD method. ACD is very distinct and has quite a few differences
that sets it apart from other UCD methods. It might be surprising for a theory that does not
place users in the center of the design/development process to be classified as a “User-centric”
design method. If we take a step back and look at it, the main goal is to deliver usable systems.
ACD definitely cannot ignore users as a part of the process although the focus is on activities.
Activities cannot be performed without the involvement of users. There is definitely an overlap
between ACD and UCD. If done correctly, a part of UCD methods (user research) can help form
the foundation for ACD. The need for Activity Centered Design emerged because users are wide
in taste and narrow in behavior, it’s an attempt to narrow down the scope and generalize the
process, making it independent of users influence while at the same time keeping in mind the
fact that ACD is meant to create better system for users. What I have attempted to do here is to
present a set of questions that might lead to the formation of a basic structure of the ACD process
because right now ACD is just a theory!

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ACD: An Activity-Focused UCD Method

REFERENCES
Gifford, B. R., & Enyedy, N. D. (1999). Activity Centered Design: Towards a Theoretical
Framework for CSCL. CSCL (pp. 189-196). Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Li, Y., & Landay, J. A. (2008). Activity-Based Prototyping of Ubicomp Applications for. CHI (pp.
1303-1312). Florence, Italy: ACM.

Nardi, B. A. (1996). Context and consciousness: activity theory and human-computer interaction.
Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Norman, D. (2005). Human-Centered Design considered harmful. Interactions , 14-19.

Williams, A. (2009). User-Centered Design, Activity-Centered Design,. SIGDOC (p. 5).

Bloomington, Indiana: ACM.

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