Human-Centered Software Engineering by Ahmed Seffah

Human-Centered Software Engineering by Ahmed Seffah

Activity theory is a way of describing and characterizing the structure of human - tivity of all kinds. First introduced by Russian psychologists Rubinshtein, Leontiev, and Vigotsky in the early part of the last century, activity theory has more recently gained increasing attention among interaction designers and others in the hum- computer interaction and usability communities (see, for example, Gay and H- brooke, 2004). Interest was given a signi?cant boost when Donald Norman suggested activity-theory and activity-centered design as antidotes to some of the putative ills of human-centered design (Norman, 2005). Norman, who has been credited with coining the phrase user-centered design, suggested that too much attention focused on human users may be harmful, that to design better tools designers need to focus not so much on users as on the activities in which users are engaged and the tasks they seek to perform within those activities. Although many researchers and practitioners claim to have used or been in?uenced by activity theory in their work (see, for example, Nardi, 1996), it is often dif?cult to trace precisely where or how the results have actually been shaped by activity theory. Inmanycases, evendetailedcasestudiesreportresultsthatseemonlydistantlyrelated, if at all, to the use of activity theory. Contributing to the lack of precise and traceable impact is that activity theory, - spite its name, is not truly a formal and proper theory.

From the reviews:

"This book … is comprised of four sections and 17 chaptersThe physical structure of the book is quite pleasing … . The editors have clearly thought about their chapter organization. … This publication is a testament to the importance of the convergence of software engineering and HCI. … this is a call to practitioners to take a larger role in creating better solutions, through a more ‘whole brain’ approach to a refined and sophisticated development model." (Brian D. Goodman, ACM Computing Reviews, October, 2009)

Jean Vanderdonckt is Full Professor in Information Systems at Louvain School of Management (LSM, Universitü¾Ž–”¼ catholique de Louvain (UCL). He is President of Louvain School of Management Research Institute (ILSM) and Head of Louvain Interaction Laboratory, a lab that conducts research, development, and consulting services in the domain of user interface engineering, an area located midway between software engineering, human-computer interaction, and usability engineering). He is also Invited Professor at Polytecnic University of Valencia, Spain. He is the scientific coordinator of the ITEA2 UsiXML European project that gathers 22 members from 6 European countries and coordinator of the UsiXML Consortium. He is a Senior Member of ACM, IEEE. He is co-editor in chief of Springer Human-Computer Interaction Series.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781848009066
ISBN 10	1848009062
Title	Human-Centered Software Engineering
Author	Ahmed Seffah
Series	Human-Computer Interaction Ser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Springer London Ltd
Year published	2009-06-22
Number of pages	398
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.