Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) - Hardcover

Suchman, Lucy A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521331374 ISBN 13: 9780521331371

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1987

Synopsis

This lively and original book offers a provocative critique of the dominant assumptions regarding human action and communication which underlie recent research in machine intelligence. Lucy Suchman argues that the planning model of interaction favoured by the majority of AI researchers does not take sufficient account of the situatedness of most human social behaviour. The problems that can arise as a result are pertinently, and often amusingly, illustrated by the careful analysis of a recorded interaction between novice users and an intelligent machine, whose design has failed to accommodate essential resources of successful human communication. Plans and Situated Actions presents a compelling case for the re-examination of current models underlying interface design. Lucy Suchman's proposals for a fresh characterisation of human-computer interaction which also incorporates recent insights from the social sciences provides a challenge that everyone interested in machine intelligence will seriously need to consider.

About this title

Book Description

A compelling case for the re-examination of interface design models is presented by this text's assertion that human behavior is not taken into account in the planning model generally favored by artificial intelligence.

Review

"Plans and Situated Actions is a substantive book. It has somthing important to say both to designers of interactive computer systems and to cognitive scientists who wish to understand communication either between people or between people and machines." Contemporary Psychology

"...a genuine pleasure to see a book that makes a real contribution to cognitive science by way of an anthropological analysis of interaction." American Anthropologist

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0521331374
• ISBN 13: 9780521331371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 224