Integrating Activity Theory and Organizational Modeling
for Context of Use Analysis

Genésio Cruz Neto
Faculdade Integrada do Recife, Recife PE,
Brasil, 50720-635
55 081 21018300
genesio@fir.br

Jaelson Castro
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, CIn,
Recife PE , Brazil, 50732-970
55 81 21268430
jbc@cin.ufpe.br

Alex Sandro Gomes
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, CIn,
Recife PE , Brazil, 50732-970
55 81 21268430
asg@cin.ufpe.br

Suzana Sampaio
Centro de Estudos e Sistemas Avançados do
Recife, Recife PE, Brazil, 50030-390
55 81 34254700
scbs@gonzaga.cesar.org.br

ABSTRACT
Activity Theory is a theoretical-based context analysis
technique that anchors the ethnographer descriptive work,
calling his attention to the individual and social elements of
human activities. For more than a decade, it has been a
recognized framework for enhancing computer design
practices, however there are still no methods for integrating
context analysis based on Activity Theory with traditional
system modeling techniques. In this paper we present a
system design process that integrates ethnographic analysis
based on Activity Theory with the i* organizational
modeling technique. The approach uses human-practices
analysis as the social root for system requirements
derivation.
Keywords
Context of Use Analysis, Activity Theory, Organizational
Modeling, Requirement Engineering
INTRODUCTION
It is widely recognized that understanding the social and
organizational context is critical to the success of many
systems today. The usability of a product depends on its
context of use and products should be designed for specific
contexts [13]. The international standard ISO 13407 [9]
also recognizes the role of context of use within usability. It
defines the process of understanding and specifying the
context of use as one of the main stages within human-
centred design process [14].
The i* framework [25], by explicitly modeling and
analyzing strategic relationships among multiple actors,
incorporates social context specifications into a systems
analysis and design framework. Actors depend on each
other for goals to be achieved, tasks to be performed, and
resources to be furnished. A notion of soft goal is used to
deal systematically with quality attributes, or non-functional
requirements. Dependencies among actors give rise to
opportunities as well as vulnerabilities. Networks of
dependencies are analyzed using a qualitative reasoning
procedure. During systems design, actors explore
alternative configurations of dependencies to assess their
strategic positioning in a multi-agent, social context.
Unfortunately, stakeholders do not know how to describe
their own social and organizational problems, neither define
many tasks they regularly do [8]. Ethnography [12, 24] is
an elicitation technique that helps the requirements engineer
to approach those problems by observing the user daily
activities as it is actually performed. By having a deep
understanding of the social context, a requirement engineer
can have insights on how to elaborate software systems that
better support the user daily activities.
Activity Theory [11, 18] provides a theoretical structure
that helps the ethnographer to select the observation focus,
gives fresh insights about the phenomena observed, and
also describes the social activities in a structured way.
These contribute to transform an apparently intuitive and
non-practical ethnographical process in a work guided by
objective reflections [12].
Indeed, for more than a decade, Activity Theory has been a
recognized framework for enhancing design practices in
Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) and
related fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) [1, 18,
19]. However, in most of the applications it has been
deployed as an analytical framework, not oriented towards
system modeling [4, 10, 17, 23].


CLIHC’05, October 23–26, 2005, Cuernavaca, Mexico. Copyright is held by the author(s). ACM 1-59593-224-0.
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In this paper we advocate that the use of i* organizational
models is a step forward in constructing software systems
more adapted to their context of use. However, we
acknowledge that its application still brings open questions
for the requirements engineer:
• Where do the organizational elements (used
in the early requirement model) come from?
• What are the theoretical social background
used for structuring the organizational
elements?
In order to answer these issues we describe a process that
integrates ethnography analysis oriented by Activity Theory
constructs with the i* technique based on organizational
modeling [25]. It relies on the use of human practices
analysis as a guide for system design. This paper extends
and integrates previous preliminary works [5, 6].
Sections 2 and 3 describe, respectively, the Activity Theory
framework and the i* organizational modeling technique.
The design process that integrates ethnography analysis
based on Activity Theory with i* organizational modeling is
introduced in section 4. In section 5, we analyse some
related works. At end, in section 6, some conclusions and
future works are described
ACTIVITY THEORY
Activity Theory (AT) [11, 18] is a broad theoretical
framework for describing the structure, development, and
social context of human activities. It has roots in the
historical-cultural soviet psychology founded by Lev
Vygostsky, A. N. Leont´ev and A. N. Luria.
According to this theory, an activity is the way a subject
(either an individual or a group) moves towards an object
with the purpose of attaining certain results or certain
objectives. Activity objects can be a concrete thing (such as
a software) or something more abstract (for example, an
idea).
Mediation tools, such as a text editor or an e-mail system,
are artifacts used to support the object transformation into a
result. Tools can be used to manipulate and understand the
object, or to improve participants communication and
motivation.
Human practices are always included in a social context. In
Activity Theory the systemic relationships between the
subject and its environment are represented by the concepts
of community, rules, and labor division. The community is
composed by all subjects interested in activity development
(usually called by Stakeholders in software engineering
community). Rules are conventions for social relationships
established by the community. Labor division refers to the
form of community organization for the process of
transforming an object into a result.
Figure 1 illustrates the systemic model proposed by
Engeström [7] that shows the relationships between the
structuring elements of the activity.
Activities can be also defined in different levels: activity
consists of actions or chains of actions. Participating in an
activity is performing conscious actions that have an
immediate and defined goal, or objective. Actions are
linked to each other in one activity by the same overall
motivation of transforming the activity object into an
outcome. The activity motivation is the characteristic that
differentiates and relates activities and actions.

Figure 1. The Engeström systemic model.
Actions can be broken in lower level sub-actions, which, in
turn, have sub-goals. Lower level actions carried
automatically are operations. Actions turn into operations
when they become routine and unconscious. Operations are
well-defined habitual routines used as answers to
conditions.
The activity levels, and their dynamics, are showed
graphically by Figure 2.

Figure 2. Activity levels.
Real life situations always involve an intertwined and
connected web of activities that are usually specified using
an activity diagram. Because activities are not isolated
units, they are influenced by other activities and changes in
the environment.
Activity Theory uses the terms tension (also called,
contradiction) to indicate a misfit, problem, incompatibility,
conflict or opportunity that occur within elements of a
single activity, or between different activities. Activity
Theory sees tension analysis as a source of activity
development. Engestrom classifies the tensions in four
types [7] (see Figure 3 for an illustration).
- Primary: the tensions found within an element of
a single activity.
- Secondary: those found between two elements of
a single activity.
- Tertiary: the imbalances found between an
activity and a culturally more advanced version
of this same activity (co-constructed with the
stakeholders).
- Quaternary: the tensions between different
activities.
A system design usually is rooted in two main tasks: 1) the
identification of user problems that justify the new software
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