Description
Applying the Activity Theory Framework in Design
Overview
The intent of this assignment is to determine your ability to apply the Activity Theory Framework inspired by the Socio?Cultural and Historical Psychology for a design task of your choice.
Assignment Task
Your tasks in this assignment are
(1) Identify a context of your choice, i.e. an activity, which are motivated and has the potential to be transformed, preferably an area in which you already know a lot about from either your passionate pursuits, your hobbies of your work. Describe the context of choice. (1,000 words max limit)
(2) Justify your belief that this context has the potential to be transformed and that eventual conceptual artefact is unclear, unknown, murky and therefore needs further development, i.e. not concrete. (1,000 words max limit)
(3) Make discrete journal entries (with date and time group) as part of your assignment as the eventual concept emerges from the initial abstract state to a concretized state of your satisfaction. Students are strongly encouraged to make journal entries that combine graphical and textual explanations as the design emerges. (No Limits)
(4) At the end of your design journey, compare and contrast the new conceptual artefacts with the historical and/or current artefacts for the same activity. (1,000 words max limit)
(5) Pen a reflection of your design journey in not more than 1,000 words that capture what you have learned from this module. (1,000 words max limit)
The Activity Theory Framework
Essentially, the framework
(1) Allows the bridging of the cartesian gap suggesting that the mind is best situated for purposeful pursuits and not worrying about the mechanisms behind this gap (a notion from Vygotskys Socio?Cultural Psychology).
(2) Espouses that cognition is embedded and distributed (a notion from Vygotskys Socio?Cultural Psychology) implying that the knowledge that can enable design can come from all over.
(3) Allows the meaningful framing of design boundaries which can be modularly assembled or disassembled to accommodate the desired level of simplicity or complexities (a combined notion from Leontievs Vygotskys Socio?Cultural Psychology).
(4) Maintains that the design process is one that goes from abstract to concrete and vice versa in the pursuits of re?designing activities that will switch between subjective and objective states (a combined notion from Leontievs Vygotskys Socio?Cultural Psychology).
(5) Maintains that the intended outcome of a design process is a new conceptual artefact that mediates and transform the activity or activities in question (a combined notion from Leontievs Vygotskys Socio?Cultural Psychology).
(6) Maintains that the conceptual artefact is knowledge in context (defined by an activity) and its creation is emergent in nature.
Depending on the level of in?depth knowledge needed for each context, the new contextual artefacts took the instructor different amount of time to create and develop. Their developments are not contiguous in nature and can be described to happen in ebbs and flows while the concepts emergently came about.
