Technology in Action
Video-based field studies of how people use tools and technologies in real workplaces. Argues that technology gains its sense through situated, coordinated interaction rather than from design alone.
A series of video-based field studies of how people actually use tools and technologies at work, and how they coordinate their actions around them. The settings range from information systems in general medical practice to the London Underground control room, news production, and computer-aided design in architecture. The throughline: a technology gains its sense and its usefulness through situated, moment-by-moment interaction, not from its design in isolation. The closest classic grounding for treating a shared artifact as part of the interaction.
Published 2000 by Cambridge University Press (Learning in Doing series).