To keep it simple, I agree with Terje's interpretation of the activity theory and its usefulness in practice: "I think the power of the activity theory actually lies in its flexibility and freedom to interpret it according to one's needs. It provides vocabulary for talking about human activity systems, it provides components of the activity to focus on and determines connections between them. It provides one of the ways to look at what humans do and how."
Trying to describe interactive environment as a human activity system, what could be the components and the relationships between them? While searching for my own understanding of interactivity, I saw it as a measure of a media's potential ability to help the user connect, interplay, socialize, retrieve, personalize and exchange information, give feedback, form and participate in communities, or in other words, a means that helps to keep the interpersonal communication alive at any time, anywhere, with anyone we choose to. Therefore, one way to look at the system is to describe user as the subject of the interactive environment, while the object is the array of opportunities to build the environment, and the outcome that user strives for is the human to human interaction (communication, collaboration). Taking a personal perspective, tools are the personal media we use to communicate (from pen and paper back in the old days to emails, (Internet) phone and video calls, instant messengers, SMS and so on in the current age). Community can be a small group of the closest friends to a global network of people with the same interests. Rules exist in the form of etiquette or netiquette (network etiquette), and division of labour can be seen as the different roles users take in the community.
When we tried to describe activity system at the beginning of the course, we thought of it more like a project rather than an interactive system. We were able to instantly name and define components such as start, end, timeframe, time management, plan, schedule, resources, restrictions, etc. An activity system is a logical collection of activities designed to fulfill some purpose, which means that often times it has a certain timeframe, plan and resources, but sometimes these components are irrelevant. One example of interactive environment is our course NIE. It started in October and ends in December, and whatever the subject and the object are (depending on the perspective, students versus facilitators), it has a timeframe. We can also think of interactive environment applying the activity theory in our personal life where interactions are not always planned and some components become irrelevant. However, without a clear perspective, in terms of the activity system we were supposed to describe, I think we listed most of the necessary components, including mediators (tools, rules), but we didn't define relation(ship)s between the components. Although we didn't specify the subject and the object (which would have helped us to shorten the list), we covered the basic structure of an activity system. We also listed the components (such as process, task, options, sequence) necessary to decompose activity into actions and operations in order to analyse the activity structure. There were some components that the basic framework of the activity theory does not clearly mention but which are closely tied to the outcome, such as feedback and evaluation (of quality, workmanship).
Trying to compare our components with the components of activity theory
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