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I am a faculty member in the Department of Informatics
in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the
University of California, Irvine.
Areas of interest:
Activity
theory proposes that consciousness is shaped by practice, that people
and artifacts mediate our relationship with reality. Consciousness is
produced in the enactment of activity with other people and things, rather
than being something confined inside a human head. Activity theory began
in Russia with the work of Lev Vygotsky in the 1920's, continuing through
his student Aleksey Leontiev, and then through students of Leontiev. This
work has been influential in education, organizational design, and interaction
design. Activity theory works well with design because activity theorists
have always tested their theories in practical ways and believe that application
is an outcome of theory, not a separate activity. In some of my writings
I have discussed how, as a psychological theory, activity theory can be
scaled to collaborative settings without losing sight of individual participants
in an activity.
Related publications
| Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, with Victor Kaptelinin, MIT Press (2006) |
|
| NetWORKers and their Activity in Intensional Networks (2002) |
|
| Co-editor, special issue of Computer-supported Cooperative Work, "Activity Theory and the Practice of Design," with David Redmiles. Volume 11(1-2) (2002) |
|
| Co-editor, special issue of Computer-supported Cooperative Work, "A Web on the Wind: The Structure of Invisible Work," with Yrjo Engeström. Volume 8 (1-2) (1998) |
|
| Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-computer Interaction, MIT Press (1996) |
My
research suggests that a good deal of communication is intended to create
feelings of connection between people rather than to convey specific messages.
Affinity, commitment, and attention are aspects of connection. They are
active fields of connection between dyads that are constantly negotiated
and monitored. These fields "decay" or grow inert without interaction.
While face to face interaction is especially rich in ways to establish
connection (touching, eating together, making eye contact, sharing common
space, informal chitchat), people also establish connection through mediated
communication. Blogs, wikis, instant messaging, email, chat, newsgroups,
listservs, websites, and games are especially interesting forms of human
communication that establish and maintain fields of connection as well
as allow for the exchange of substantive information. My most recent research concerns massively multiplayer online games. I am conducting participant-observation fieldwork in World of Warcraft, the most popular MMOG, studying how players collaborate as well as the relationship of offline, online, and in-game activity.
Related publications
The
computer desktop was an amazing design for its time, but does not reflect
the complexity, flexibility, and sociality of human activity. Based on
my research, I have developed several designs that I believe would enhance
the desktop, if it were possible to take them past the prototype stage
and onto actual desktops. I hope the ideas will find their way into the
designs of others. Eventually we will have to reorganize the desktop to
reflect the complex mix of activities users engage in and move beyond
the rigidity of separate applications and files-and-folders. Activity
theory will be useful in this effort as we work to characterize activity.
While ingenious technologies such as blogs and wikis have improved communication,
we need better ways to use digital technologies to organize multiple activities,
establish meaningful contexts for different activities, and collaborate
with others. A different level of design and implementation is needed
to make that happen.
There
is a strong need to find new ways to think about the social and cultural
changes that come with new technologies. I have examined some such changes
with respect to the work of librarians and others discussed in Information
Ecologies.Our limited ability to predict change coupled with enormous
human creativity has led to a situation of instability in which systemic
effects of technological change can only be responded to after the fact.
In the current global economy we have efficient ways of distributing technology
but ineffectual means of addressing negative consequences (such as pollution
from wireless devices). New political and social forms are needed. Movements
such as green design, life cycle analysis, and cradle to cradle design
address some problems and can be applied to digital technologies. Social
changes are more difficult to characterize and require better theorizing.
One of my interests is in what I call "placeless organizations"
which are distributed groups dedicated to transforming practice. In the
modern context they inevitably make use of computer-mediated communication
as they attempt to "co-construct," in activity theory terms,
the way things are done. Examples of placeless organizations are Open
Source software development projects, Doctors without Borders, the World
Trade Organization, and transformations in scientific disciplines from
"small science" to "big science". Understanding how
placeless organizations are effective with relatively few people is a
current focus of my research.| Co-editor, special issue of Transactions on Computer-human Interaction, "Social Impacts of Technology," with Matt Jones and Elizabeth Mynatt. Volume 12 (2). 2005. |
|
| Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart, with Vicki O'Day. MIT Press, 1999 |
Bonnie Nardi
Department of Informatics
Donald Bren School of Information and
Computer Sciences
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697
Office 209 ICS-2
Copyright 2005 Bonnie Nardi - Last updated: April 12th,
2008
University of California, Irvine - Informatics