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Wild in the Laboratory: A Discussion of Plans and Situated Actions

Author:

John RooksbyAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 20, Issue 3

Article No.: 19, Pages 1 - 17

https://doi.org/10.1145/2491500.2491507

Published: 01 July 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Suchman’s book Plans and Situated Actions has been influential in HCI (Human Computer Interaction). The book is often discussed with reference to ethnographic fieldwork, sometimes being cited as if it were a field study. However, the book uses examples from a laboratory study and contains criticisms of ethnography. This article explores how and why Suchman carried out a laboratory study. Based upon this exploration, it argues that social analysis in HCI does not necessitate fieldwork outside the laboratory. More broadly, the paper argues that an appreciation of Plans and Situated Actions can help in moving towards forms of social analysis that span both the laboratory and the world outside. If there is to be a “turn to the wild” in HCI, this should not be a turn away from the laboratory but a turn away from research methods that ignore human practice. This is not to defend laboratory experiments, but to defend laboratory-based studies that explicate technology in practice.

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Wild in the Laboratory: A Discussion of Plans and Situated Actions

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Volume 20, Issue 3

Special Issue of “The Turn to The Wild”

July 2013

177 pages

ISSN:1073-0516

EISSN:1557-7325

DOI:10.1145/2491500

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 01 July 2013

Accepted: 01 April 2013

Revised: 01 March 2013

Received: 01 July 2012

Published in TOCHI Volume 20, Issue 3

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