Grappling With Distributed Usability: A Cultural-Historical Examination Of Documentation Genres Over Four Decades

摘要

Traditional models of usability assume that usability is q quality that can be designed into a particular artifact. Yet constructivist theory implies that usability cannot be located in a single artifact; rather, it must be conceived as a quality of the entire activity in which the artifact is used. This article describes a distributed approach to usability, based on activity theory and genre theory.