Cooperative Work and Lived Cognition: A Taxonomy of Embodied Actions

Abstract

Based on a field study of cooperative design in a distributed company, this paper identifies and defines the embodied actions of the designers that enabled a cooperative design process. These actions are considered as classes of cognitive practices that are simultaneously available to the actor and others in a shared physical workspace. The public availability of these actions to the perceptions of the participants in a cooperative process enables their communicative functions A taxonomy of embodied actions is developed as a bridging structure between the field study of cooperative work and the design of technology that might support that work over distance. Boundaries are drawn by mapping practices; "objects" do not pre-exist as such. Objects are boundary projects. But boundaries shift from within; boundaries are very tricky. What boundaries provisionally contain remains generative, productive of meanings and bodies. Siting (sighting) boundaries is a risky practice. Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges, 1991, p. 200