A Post-Rational Model of Behavior I
From CS260SP09
Reading
"A Post-Rational Model of Behavior" John Canny, draft March 2009.
Discussions
Due to the late posting of the reading, discussions will be due on Friday 3/20/2009
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Ketrina Yim 20:42, 16 March 2009 (PDT)
It seems more appropriate to call the "action chain" an "action tree" or "action graph". While many action chains, such as handshakes or boiling water, are linear (provided nothing goes awry), there are those where the next action depends on the outcome of the current action, creating branches or even loops. One example would be in conversations (or the dialogue trees commonly found in point-and-click adventure games), where the next thing one of the participants says or does next depends on what was said previously. A pleasant chat could escalate into an argument simply because someone misspoke or there was a misunderstanding, as it often occurs in many Internet forum threads, where few rules exist to establish a context for politeness and anonymity encourages irrational behavior.
Seth Horrigan 02:06, 18 March 2009 (PDT)
I do not want to be repetitive, but my thoughts reinforce the ideas presented in previous discussions. I agree that Activity-Centered Design can work as a necessary and useful complement to pure human-centered design: it is important to understand the activities that humans are engaged in and to design tools to assist in those; however, I have not yet seen any strong convincing evidence that activity theory is the correct fit in this case. It is true that understanding human activities and imposing a consistent structure can be greatly useful in designing software. Even so, the sheer artificiality of the entire system disturbs me. The underlying goal of understanding activities is essential, yet, the strict categorization according to a preset criteria seems an unfortunate product of the application of empirical "hard" science to the problems addressed by the social and humanitarian "soft" sciences.
Brian Tran 08:06, 18 March 2009 (PDT)
In lecture, we talked about how one of the reasons Action Theory is hard to apply is because an activity must be defined for every program (an actual activity, information management, etc). I found it very interesting how John said that this is actually one of its strengths because it makes Action Theory more usable across a wide spectrum of computer applications. It simplifies the problem for the designer and puts the focus on the activity rather than the actions (keeping us looking at the big picture). At times, I feel that Action Theory could be some kind of evolution for OOP in how it simplifies and abstracts problems for designers.a
Junda Liu 09:45, 18 March 2009 (PDT)
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Anuj 01:09, 19 March 2009 (PDT)
When we did the reading on activity theory, I was a little confused about the applications of the same in software agents/systems. The readings on Activity centered design cleared some doubts in that direction, but there was still a void in terms of the way activity theory was being put into action. This reading gave me a very good sense of how an activity can be broken up into set of specific definitions (which in union define the activity to its core, if not completely). What is more interesting to observe is that activities generally have Subject, Tool and Object attached to them, which is close on lines with the concept of "Rules" in game design (defined as Subject, Verb, Object tuples). What might be even more interesting to look at would be as to how aspects, roles, situation and action chains translate into game design elements. I believe games like SIMS already do that to some extent.
Nicholas Kong 14:32, 20 March 2009 (PDT)
One thing I am still a little unclear about is the difference between an action chain and an activity. My confusion is likely the same as that I encountered with the hierarchy of activities outlined by Nardi in our first activity theory reading. The example given in this document was that administering medication consisted of an action chain. However, later it is noted that in the process of executing the actions of the "administer medication" chain, we must execute sub-activities, such as the "fetch and move objects" activity. In that case, could each action in an action chain be considered a smaller activity in service of the primary activity or activities? Perhaps pragmatically it doesn't matter whether we call them activities or actions, but maybe a clearer demarcation between the two would help.
Simon Tan 17:06, 20 March 2009 (PDT)
This post-rational model of behavior seems to be a heavy augmentation of Activity Theory with extra components: Action chains, aspect, situations, and roles/relations. From the introduction, it seemed like it would include a lot more - elements of genetic theories or other approaches. However, I was surprised at how much it borrowed from Activity Theory proper.
I do feel that this model is more grounded in practicality than Activity Theory is. For example, Activity Theory considers "actions" but does not explain how one action leads to another or how a subject decides on the set of actions needed to transform the Object. With Aspect and Action chains, this is made more clear.
One thing about action chains, though - how do they compare with Activity Theory's "action-operation dynamic", where conscious actions turn into subconscious operations over time? I would think that as one executes an action chain many times over, they become so experienced with it that it becomes second nature to them and they don't have a need to conceptualize it as an action chain. I wasn't sure if this model took this into consideration, or what it would be called.
Himanshu Sharma 18:18, 20 March 2009 (PDT)
Like Anuj, even I was confused on how the activity theory can significantly contribute in designing HCI systems. I think I have mentioned it in earlier comments as well. With this new model, as an extension of Activity Theory, I can better relate to the practical aspect of the theory in designing interfaces for unschooled users helping them learn advanced activites associated with schooled users. (Though particularly, I did not agree with the specific example - reasoning that limited schooling patients have difficulty following medication instructions because they are not apt at planning action chains. It may be true for more advanced reasoning based planning).
David (Tavi) Nathanson 18:37, 20 March 2009 (PDT)
Regarding choosing the word "activity" over "frame" and other words, I wanted to mention that I personally associate "activity" with fun. This is probably due to the fact that the word brings me back to elementary school and summer camp, where everything we did was a fun "activity." I wonder if this is a common association, or if most people regard activity as a more neutral word?
Regarding the discussion of foraging in lecture, I wonder if some people exhibit more foraging behavior, in general, than others? Even more broadly, might certain age groups exhibit more foraging behavior then others? Perhaps certain cultures, as well? I started thinking about this because I, personally, tend to "forage" a lot, no matter what I'm doing.
Priyanka Reddy 05:32, 21 March 2009 (PDT)
@Ketrina, I was also curious about how action chains take into account the idea of choice. As humans, we tend not to perform the same set of actions everytime - it varies based on the situation and our choices. However, if we were to take each branch in that "action tree" and call it a separate action chain, then it becomes a matter of figuring out which action chain one is following.
@Seth, what you said about Activity Theory being a result of trying to take a social science and trying to frame it as an empirical science was really interesting. It reminded me very much of what ET Hall was saying about low context societies and research. As Seth mentioned, I think Activity Theory is a good step in the right direction, but I think finding an adequate solution that is broad enough to fit all situations but not too vague will be very hard.
Kenrick Kin 11:42, 21 March 2009 (PDT)
Examining Action Theory is like reducing our lives to the equivalent of characters in a game. I don't recall exactly how The Sims is played, but I believe you can tell the character to do certain actions or you can let time lapse in which case the character will automatically perform its routine. That's pretty much we do. By looking at Action Theory, we are reducing our lives into routines that we run on autopilot. Overall we don't really think about what we are doing, we just do them because that's what we do. Sure there are day to day fluctuations in our behavior, but our actions are predetermined given the context of the situation. It's interesting (maybe depressing) just looking at our action patterns through an external lens.
